Trump-Russia report did not exonerate US president of obstruction of justice, Robert Mueller says

Former US Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday said in his long-awaited US congressional testimony he had not exonerated President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice and defended the integrity of his inquiry under repeated attacks by conservative Republican allies of the president.

During a day of sometimes dramatic high-stakes political theatre, the one-time FBI director answered questions publicly for the first time on his inquiry in back-to-back hearings, with Democrats and Republicans taking familiar positions at a time of deep partisan divisions in the United States.

The hearings, with Mueller facing a rapid-fire succession of questions and often sidestepping or merely referring lawmakers to the text of his investigative report, appeared to do little to move the Democrats — who control the House of Representatives — closer to launching the impeachment process to try to remove Trump from office even as he seeks re-election in 2020.

Mueller spent 22 months investigating what he concluded was Russian interference in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” in the 2016 US election to help Trump, as well as the president’s conduct in what the report concluded were numerous attempts to impede the investigation.

He appeared for more than 3-1/2 hours before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, then testified to the House Intelligence Committee.

The Judiciary Committee’s Democratic chairman, Jerrold Nadler, praised Mueller and said no one, including Trump, is “above the law.”