Dense legal memos from the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel typically dont command the nations collective attention, let alone lend themselves to easily digestible sound bites. So the media coverage and political discussion around an apparent dispute between Robert Mueller and Attorney General William Barr over the impact of OLC opinions on the former special counsels investigation of potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump has been a bit confusing.

The OLCs longstanding view has been that federal prosecutors cant indict a sitting president. Mueller, at his high-profile press event this week, reiterated that his investigators accepted the position that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional and that charging Trump with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.

Democrats want to be able to say that the only reason Trump wasnt indicted is because hes the sitting president, that being in the Oval Office put him above the law. But Muellers office has been careful to deprive them of a clean way to say that without caveat. And Trump supporters have seized upon the public uncertainty, leaving many Americans with the false belief that Muellers report cleared Trump and that its time for everyone to move on.

Barr and Mueller issued a carefully worded joint statement this week claiming there was no dispute between the two men over their views on how the OLCs views on indicting a president shaped the Mueller investigation. But that might be overly diplomatic.

In a highly criticized press conference ahead of the mid-April release of a redacted version of the report, the attorney general said that hed pushed Mueller on whether the special counsels team would have sought an indictment but for the OLC opinion.

Mueller, Barr told reporters, was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found a crime.

In fact, what Mueller explained this week and in his report was that, under his interpretation of the OLCs views and Justice Department policy, he couldnt even attempt to reach a decision on whether the president committed a crime. They couldnt open that door at all. Muellers team believed that directly suggesting that the president committed crimes that he couldnt be charged with would be unfair to Trump.

If they accused Trump of committing a crime without charging him, he wouldnt have the ability to clear his name in court, Muellers team wrote. [A] prosecutors judgement that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator, Muellers team wrote.

Following DOJ policy, Mueller said in his prepared remarks, his team determined they would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the President committed a crime. He said his office would not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about Trump.