Former Attorney General Ed Meese, who served under President Ronald Reagan, told the Daily Caller in an exclusive interview that he believes Attorney General Bill Barr is working to restore trust in the Department of Justice.
“I think that Bill Barr has done an outstanding job as attorney general, having to take over and look at situations that go all the way back to the Obama administration,” Meese said when asked to evaluate Barr’s performance in the role thus far. “I think Bill is continuing to do what Jeff [Sessions] did, and that is to restore the dignity and integrity to the Department of Justice.”
Meese weighed in on Barr’s handling of the release of the Mueller report, which contained Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice during the investigation. Meese praised Barr’s decision to release his own summary of the report and to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge against the president. (RELATED: Mueller Says He Believes AG Barr Acted In ‘Good Faith’)
“I think what [Barr] did was an accurate summary … there’s no question if you compare what Bill Barr said in the report, when it was ultimately released in its entirety, that what he said was an accurate summary,” Meese asserted.
He continued, “Bill Barr had no choice but to make a choice on the obstruction of justice charge because it was standing out there before the public, and the Mueller commission did not carry out their responsibility to make a determination if there was adequate evidence to charge a person with a crime, and in the absence of that, you couldn’t just leave that out there for the public to speculate.”
Meese also challenged the notion that the report did not “exonerate” the president, explaining that the purview of an investigation is not to exonerate anyone, but to determine if there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime.
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