'The Report Is My Testimony.' Robert Mueller Signals He'd Rather Not Testify to Congress

Special Counsel Robert Mueller formally ended his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, refusing to take questions from reporters and signaling that he would prefer not to testify to Congress.

“The report is my testimony,” he told a group of reporters hastily assembled at the Justice Department on Wednesday.

During the nine-minute statement, Mueller reiterated the conclusions of his his team’s 448-page report: that Russians systematically interfered in the 2016 election by hacking, that investigators found “insufficient evidence” to find any Americans conspired with the Russians in that effort, that his team pointedly did not say whether or not President Donald Trump obstructed justice during the investigation and that Congress could make that decision on its own.

“I have not spoken publicly during our investigation,” he said, in his first public remarks since the report came out. “I am speaking out today because our investigation is complete, the attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public, we are formally losing the special counsel’s office and as well I am resigning from the Department of Justice to return to private life.”