DOJ has released the memo that Ed O’Callaghan and Steven Engel used to claim there wasn’t evidence to charge Trump with obstruction.
A key part of it is a claim that the evidence in Volume I was “conclusive” that there wasn’t evidence to charge any of Trump’s flunkies with conspiring with Russia.
Only at least O’Callaghan knew that the evidence wasn’t conclusive. On Page 178, the Mueller Report they claimed was conclusive revealed that they had referred Stone for further investigation into whether he had conspired with Russian to hack.
The Office determined that it could not pursue a Section 1030 conspiracy charge against Stone for some of the same legal reasons. The most fundamental hurdles, though, are factual ones.1279
1279 Some of the factual uncertainties are the subject of ongoing investigations that have been referred by this Office to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office.
DOJ covered that footnote up for another 20 months, releasing it only the day before the 2020 election.
From that point forward, Barr had to make sure that DOJ wouldn’t pursue that investigation into Stone, because it would expose the lie at the core of his cover-up.