Joyce White Vance

Opinion contributor

Just two months ago, brand new Attorney General William Barr took to the podium at the Justice Department to share his “principal conclusions” about the Mueller report with the public. He told us there would be no further charges brought by the Special Counsel’s Office, that Robert Mueller had concluded he should not charge President Donald Trump with collusion or obstruction.

Subsequently a letter from Mueller to Barr — complaining that Barr’s comments did not “fully capture the context, nature and substance” of the Russia investigation — surfaced. Now we know that letter was more than just the snit from members of Mueller’s team that Barr tried to dismiss it as. Wednesday morning, Mueller made his own statement.

His remarks sounded like the comments Mueller wanted Barr to make when the report was first released.

Mueller's statement reframes the conversation

If Mueller’s statement Wednesday had been the public’s introduction to his report, the conversation about it would have been framed in a very different light, far more damaging to Trump than Barr’s were.

Barr’s comments permitted the president to publicly proclaim “no collusion, no obstruction.” Mueller told us his investigation found insufficient evidence to establish a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. This is not the same as saying there was no conspiracy and nowhere close to the president’s “no collusion” claim. Mueller explained that the investigation was hampered by witnesses who lied and witnesses who wouldn’t testify. Insufficient evidence doesn’t mean the president or anyone else is “innocent,” as Trump tweeted after Mueller spoke.

Mueller’s comments Wednesday should have been the first public characterization of his findings on obstruction of justice. Mueller explained that obstruction “strikes at the core of their government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable,” and that his team did not have "confidence” that the president “clearly” did not commit that crime. In the understated way prosecutors use when discussing investigations in public, Mueller said, if Trump had been anyone other than the president of the United States, he would have been charged with obstruction.

Read more commentary:

Sean Spicer: Democrats should accept the conclusions of the Mueller report

No, the case against President Trump is far from closed

Robert Mueller told us everything we need to know

Where are we? The public’s understanding of the report is tainted by Barr’s initial comments. It is difficult to change first impressions. After Mueller’s remarks, it’s important to have a conversation about his actual conclusions, unclouded by Barr’s assessment.

Even Trump seemed to understand this. Although he tweeted “nothing changes” after we heard from Mueller, he backed off of “no collusion, no obstruction,” acknowledging, as he now must, that Mueller found “insufficient evidence” to charge a conspiracy. Trump erroneously concluded this meant “in our country, a person is innocent.” Of course it does not. And Trump ignored Mueller’s conclusions about obstruction. The ground has shifted beneath Trump’s feet, and he managed to emphasize that, even as he tried to deny it.

This matters because the president, whom Mueller explained Department of Justice policy forced him to treat as someone who could not be charged while in office, is constitutionally accountable to Congress for high crimes and misdemeanors. Mueller said others had an obligation to pick up where left off.

Mueller's statement signals serious misconduct

All eyes have been on Congress for some time. But if Mueller had spoken first, there would have been little doubt the president had engaged in serious misconduct. Barr’s summary gave Trump several weeks to publicly crow that Mueller concluded he had not committed any crimes. If we had had Mueller’s words for the several weeks before the redacted report was released, the public narrative would have been sharply different.

People may draw different conclusions from the evidence and conclusions the report reaches, but Barr’s “principal conclusions” were a fairy tale concocted to pacify an angry president. They were not true. The American people deserve better.

Congress can correct the injustice with open hearings. Lawmakers can accept the invitation Mueller clearly extended to them in his report and again Wednesday to take up his work.

But the reality is, we owe it to ourselves to hear Mueller’s testimony firsthand. He told us that his written report was his testimony. Nearly 500 pages is a lot of reading. But we must each pull time from our busy schedules and read the report. Listen to it while you’re commuting. Start with the summaries. But understand it for yourself. There are plenty of voices that don’t have a political agenda, former prosecutors for one, whose commentary you can turn to for clarification of legal concepts.

Prosecutors write that they would have charged President Trump

Some of those former prosecutors have already spoken. A bipartisan group of almost a thousand of them read Mueller’s report and concluded that they would have charged Trump with obstruction, based on the evidence.

The attorney general has claimed that obstruction can’t be charged without an underlying crime a defendant sought to conceal. But as he knows, this is untrue, and DOJ prosecutors charge the crime without an underlying offense. This makes sense — the goal of obstruction is to keep prosecutors from proving a crime, so if you had to prove the crime to charge obstruction, it would be pointless. Mueller explained why obstruction of justice is so important. He told us it’s a crime that “strikes at the core of the government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.” Prosecutors take the crime seriously. And it’s that much more serious when it’s the president, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, who obstructs or attempts to obstruct justice.

Prosecutors often speak in measured tones. They are not given to drama or showy headlines. But Wednesday morning, Robert Mueller told us what he wanted the country to know about his report all along. It’s important to the future of our democracy that we listen and act accordingly.

Joyce White Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, served as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. Follow her on Twitter: @JoyceWhiteVance