Attorney General William Barr said he was “surprised” when special counsel Robert Mueller told him he wouldn’t reach a decision on whether President Trump tried to obstruct justice.

“We were, frankly, surprised by that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction. And we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this and the basis for this,” Barr told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during his testimony on Wednesday.

He said Mueller told him about his plans when the two met on March 5 before the report was released.

“Special counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found
obstruction,” Barr told the panel.

Barr said Mueller explained his reasoning.

“He said that in the future, the facts of the case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion but this is not such a case,” Barr said.

The attorney general said he pressed Mueller on why he wouldn’t make a decision, but “he said that his team was still formulating the explanation.”

He also said he offered to allow Mueller to preview the four-page summary of the report before he would release it on March 24, but the special counsel declined.