The assembled cast of CNN analysts, hosts, and journalists were staring down at their phones and printouts as they were reading Attorney General William Barr’s letter to Congress summarizing the Special Counsel report, Sunday afternoon on CNN Newsroom. They seemed almost mystified by the findings when they began to admit President Trump would not be facing charges. But then once they seemed to realize what they were saying, they began walking it back.

CNN crime and Justice reporter Shimon Prokupecz was one of the first to realize the truth. Reading from the third page of the letter and dubbing it “probably one of the most important lines in this”, Prokupecz said:

“In making the determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference and that while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President's intent with respect to obstruction.”

And on the suggestions of obstruction of justice by the President, they found nothing either. Reporter Pamela Brown reading: “I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense.”

“They’ve cleared him,” Prokupecz responded seemingly disappointed, with Brown right behind him saying, “They just cleared him.”

Chief political analyst Gloria Borger immediately jumped in to spin the wording for Democrats:

BORGER: But it also says, and it quotes the special counsel saying, quote, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” PROKUPECZ: That’s right. BROWN: And that is going to be what the Democrats, and they already have, counts on. BORGER: That's going to be the nub right there.

Both Brown and chief political correspondent Dana Bash seemed shocked by how “this makes clear in these findings that they didn't see a case for obstruction of justice.” Bash also tried to spin the findings as still being open-ended, saying, “it's not that they didn't necessarily have all the goods, they couldn't prove it without a reasonable doubt.”

“The President has just been exonerated,” Brown exclaimed, almost shouting. “Can we just take a step back and focus on the fact that this is nearly a two-year investigation that has swirled around the President since day one of his presidency, and he has just been exonerated.”

After Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer noted how the letter said the decisions by investigators were “not based on the constitutional considerations” of charging a sitting president, Brown sought to walk back her exclamation:

Can I clarify something? It does say that they cannot conclude he committed a crime and it does not exonerate him. But for the President's purposes and his team's purposes, he's been exonerated. I wanted to clarify that.

Clearly, CNN is all over the place and can’t admit what the report means for Trump. Perhaps another good sign for the President. This is CNN.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: