U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has announced his resignation from the Department of Justice, and saying he is closing the Office of the Special Counsel following the completion of his lengthy investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“I am speaking out today because our investigation is complete, the attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public,” Mueller said in a statement to media.
“We are formally closing the special counsel’s office, and I am resigning from the department of justice to return to private life.
“Charging the president with a crime was not an option we could consider,” Mueller noted, and said “it would be unfair to accuse someone of a crime when there could be no court resolution of the charge. If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime,” he emphasized.
“We concluded that we would not reach a determination, one way or the other, about whether the president committed a crime. That is the office’s final position, and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president.”
Mueller added that he would not make any further public statements on the issue, other than what was already in the 400-page report. “The work speaks for itself,” he pointed out. “The report is my testimony.”
