By Allan Smith and Adam Edelman (NBC News)
Special counsel Robert Mueller said on Wednesday that his report "speaks for itself" and that even if he were to testify before Congress he wouldn't provide any information "beyond what is already public."
"The report is my testimony," Mueller said at the Justice Department in his first comments on the two-year probe of Russian election meddling and possible obstruction by President Donald Trump.
Mueller said that, when it came to his report, "we chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself."
"I would not provide information beyond what is already public in any appearance before Congress," Mueller said.
Mueller, whose report did not come to a traditional prosecutorial decision on whether Trump obstructed justice, reiterated his conclusion.
"If we had had confidence that he clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so," Mueller said, implicitly refuting Trump's repeated statements that Mueller had exonerated him.
The special counsel made it clear that he felt constrained from the beginning of his probe by Justice Department rules that prohibit the indictment of a sitting president. The method for charging and removing a president, he said, lies outside the criminal justice system, referring to the Constitution's provisions for impeaching and convicting a president.
Mueller, who also said he is resigning to return to private life, did not take questions from reporters after his roughly 10-minute statement.
The Department of Justice had announced that Mueller would speak about 90 minutes before he stepped up to the podium.
A senior White House official said that the White House was notified on Tuesday night that Mueller might make a statement, so the administration was not caught off-guard.
A senior administration official told NBC News that, following that initial notification, the White House did not know the content of what Mueller would say. The official added that the White House made no attempt to stop Mueller from speaking.
Mueller has not made any comment on the investigation since he was named special counsel in May 2017. House Democrats are seeking to have him testify before Congress in the coming weeks. Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Mueller was willing to testify but only in private.
Mueller's planned remarks come after a new book reportedly asserted that Mueller drew up a three-count obstruction of justice indictment against President Donald Trump before deciding to abandon it. Mueller did not comment on the book during his statement at the Justice Department.
In March, Mueller submitted to Attorney General William Barr his 400-plus page report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, whether the Trump campaign or Trump associates conspired with Russia in those efforts and if Trump sought to obstruct justice.
Days later, Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller's report which the special counsel said "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of his investigation. Trump used the Barr summary to claim he was exonerated in the weeks that followed before, in mid-April, Barr released a lightly redacted version of Mueller's report.
In his report, Mueller extensively detailed Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and associates with Russians, and Trump's efforts to quash the probe. Mueller wrote that the evidence he reviewed was not enough to establish a Trump-Russia conspiracy while, on obstruction, he said he could not come to a traditional prosecutorial decision.
"Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him," Mueller wrote, later adding that Trump's "efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests."
