Comey: Mueller ‘didn’t succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency’

Former FBI Director James Comey said Saturday that former special counsel Robert Mueller did not succeed in his mission due to “inadequate transparency.”

“He didn’t succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency to the American people on whose behalf he was investigating,” Comey said during the Politicon political conference in Nashville, Tenn. 

He said there were two major ways this “transparency” was lacking: “the way in which his report was spun, massaged and, in my view, misconstrued by the attorney general” and the fact that “they way in which it was physically presented made it impossible for the American people to have access to it.”

“Mueller presented a great report that’s old-school. It’s 446 pages long. But nobody has access to it, so nobody sees the work he did, and the American people, except for a small slice, don’t know that he removed any possible fuzz on the notion of the Russian attack, that he laid out an extraordinary series of acts by the president,” Comey said. 

“I think part of his mandate is to make sure that the people who he represents have a reasonable understanding of what he found,” he added. 

Mueller’s investigation into whether there was Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election followed Comey’s 2017 firing. This year, a redacted version of Mueller’s report was released publicly. 

The report outlined 10 instances in which President Trump may have obstructed justice. It also found that Russia attempted to interfere in U.S. elections. It did not find that the Trump campaign illegally conspired with Russia. 

Ahead of the release of the redacted report, Attorney General William Barr released a summary saying he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined there was not enough evidence to bring an obstruction of justice charge against Trump.