Professor Miriam Baer Appears on CNN and in Vox, Politico, and Politifact on Mueller Report

Professor Miriam Baer, an expert in criminal law and former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, offered her thoughts to CNN, Vox, and Politico on whether Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report was sufficient to exonerate President Donald Trump of wrong-doing. Baer concluded that the report does not exonerate Trump and that, without further details, Barr’s summary is not conclusive.

“No, this report does not ‘exonerate’ the president if one understands the word to mean ‘demonstrating one’s innocence,’” said Baer in a round-up of commentary in Politico that included legal experts such as Laurence H. Tribe, Elizabeth Holtzman, and Alan Dershowitz. “The president and his allies might feel vindicated by this summary, but it is far too premature to say that without first examining the report itself and, to the extent possible, its underlying documentation.”

In Vox, Baer delved further into the possibility that Trump obstructed justice. “Barr advises that Mueller declined to say, one way or the other, whether President Trump obstructed justice,” she said. “The attorney general then goes on to advise that he and [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein have reached their own joint conclusion that the facts laid out in the report fail to establish a ‘nexus’ between Trump’s behavior and any specific ‘proceeding’…[I]t will be crucial for the attorney general to provide Congress as full a recitation of the facts contained in the special counsel’s report as possible.”

As for the full report, Baer told CNN host Brooke Baldwin that because it contains details related to ongoing investigations, she does not believe it should be released without a careful redaction, which shouldn’t be rushed, despite calls from House members that it be delivered by April 2. “I want to see as much of that report as I can see without causing any legal problems.”

At the Law School, Baer is associate director of the Center for the Study of Business Law and Regulation and teaches in the areas of corporate law, white collar crime, criminal law, and criminal procedure. She has been a frequent commentator on legal issues related to the Mueller investigation. Her paper, Sorting out White Collar Crime, has recently been published in Texas Law Review.

Read the coverage in CNN, Vox, Politico, and Politifact.