THIS MUCH IS TRUE:

3) Rebutting Trump's claims of total exoneration: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed."

 

Mueller clarified his position on whether he would have indicted the president if not for the opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel that says a sitting president shouldn't face criminal charges. "We did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime," he said.

"We did not address 'collusion,' which is not a legal term," Mueller said in his opening statement. "Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not."

Asked whether the president, under Justice Department policy, could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he leaves office, Mueller kept his answer succinct: "True." [...]

5) On why he didn't subpoena the president: "We decided that we did not want to exercise the subpoena powers because of the necessity of expediting the end of the investigation."

The former special counsel conceded that Trump's written answers to his questions about Russian interference -- the president refused to answer any questions about the 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice that his office explored - were "certainly not as useful as the interview would be."

Despite Trump's claims that he fully cooperated, Mueller noted that the president's team stonewalled in negotiations for over a year about a sit-down interview and said he assumed Trump "would fight the subpoena." Mueller explained that he needed to decide "how much time you are willing to spend in the courts litigating an interview with the president."

Despite claims that Mueller wanted to drag out his investigation, he made clear that he hoped to get it wrapped up as soon as possible. "The reason we didn't do the interview was because of the length of time that it would take to resolve the issues attendant to that," he said.

6) There was a coverup: "A number of people we interviewed in our investigation, it turns out, did lie."

Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos have each acknowledged that they lied to the FBI. Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) asked Mueller whether it was "fair to say" that Trump's written answers were "not only inadequate and incomplete, because he didn't answer many of your questions, but where he did, his answers showed that he wasn't always being truthful."

"I would say, generally," Mueller replied.

Mueller acknowledged that he caught many former members of Trump's team not telling the truth, and this made it harder to investigate what really happened. "That would be accurate," he said.

"And then," Schiff said, "they lied to cover it up?"

"Generally, that's true," said Mueller.

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