Charging Trump with crime "not an option," : Mueller

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday made his first-ever public statement about the investigation into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, saying that charging President Donald Trump with a crime was "not an option we could consider" due to Justice Department guidelines.

"The report is my testimony," Mueller said in his on-camera appearance, referring to his investigators' 448-page report. He didn't take questions. He said he would prefer not to publicly testify before Congress about his 22-month probe.

Mueller explained the longstanding Justice Department policy, which states that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.

"Charging the president with a crime was not an option we could consider," Mueller said, adding that "it would be unfair to accuse someone of a crime when there could be no court resolution of the charge."

"If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," he said. "We did not determine whether the president did commit a crime."

"The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse the president of wrongdoing," Mueller said, echoing his report which states that Congress "may apply obstruction laws to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law."

"We concluded that we would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime," Mueller added. "That is the office's final position."