Ted Lieu, the congressman from California who has long been one of President Trump’s chief Twitter antagonists, got to make his case against the President in an official setting on Wednesday. Like many of his Democratic colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, Lieu spent much of his time allotted for questioning Robert Mueller recounting the details laid out in the report that Mueller and his team produced this spring. “So to recap what we’ve heard,” Lieu said. “We have heard today that the President ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire you. The President then ordered Don McGahn to then cover that up and create a false paper trail. And now we’ve heard the President ordered Corey Lewandowski to tell Jeff Sessions to limit your investigation, so that you stop investigating the President. I believe a reasonable person, looking at these facts, could conclude that all three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice have been met.” Lieu then quickly swerved into a question. “I’d like to ask you,” he said. “The reason, again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of the O.L.C. opinion”—a reference to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—“stating that you cannot indict a sitting President. Correct?”

“That is correct,” Mueller said.

On Twitter, Matthew Miller, the former Justice Department press official who, like Lieu, has been an outspoken Trump critic and Russia-investigation obsessive, wrote, of Mueller’s response, “I don’t know if this was a misstatement or a Freudian slip, but either way it is undoubtedly true.”

It only takes watching Mueller for a few minutes to understand that the guy is terse. His answers on Wednesday morning were largely limited to some variation of “yes,” “true,” “I can’t answer that question,” and “I’d refer you to the coverage of this in the report.” And yet, here, a lawmaker asked if the President would be facing criminal charges for his actions if he were anyone but the President. And the answer was, or appeared to be, yes. A few moments later in his exchange with Lieu, Mueller said, “The only thing I want to add is that I’m going through the elements with you do not mean, or does not mean, that I’ve subscribed to the—what you’re trying to prove through those elements.” But that wasn’t a refutation, either.

Mueller spoke about the issue at further length under questioning by Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado. “Was there sufficient evidence to convict President Trump or anyone else with obstruction of justice?” Buck asked.

“We did not make that calculation,” Mueller said, citing the O.L.C. opinion.

Buck countered that, despite the O.L.C. opinion, Mueller had come to a conclusion that the President hadn’t colluded with Russia. “But when it came to obstruction, you threw a bunch of stuff up against the wall to see what would stick,” he said. Mueller said that he wouldn’t agree with that “characterization.”

“O.K., but could you charge the President with a crime after he left office?” Buck asked.

“Yes,” Mueller said calmly.

“You believe that he committed—you could charge the President of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?” Buck asked, again.

“Yes.”

No doubt, Mueller is being cagey here. He is being terse. He is trying to stay within the bounds of his report, as he indicated that he would—and on this point his report is vague and technical. But, on multiple occasions during his testimony, Mueller declined to deny that the President committed acts that could get him indicted in federal court.

Update: At the beginning of Mueller’s turn before the House Intelligence Committee, on Wednesday afternoon, he took a moment to address his earlier exchange with Lieu. Referring to the phrasing of Lieu’s question, he said, “That is not the correct way to say it. As we say in the report, and I said at the opening, we did not reach a determination on whether the President committed a crime.”