Pete Buttigieg on Thursday responded to
the release of the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert
Mueller's report on whether President Donald Trump colluded with
Russia.
“The Mueller report is a disturbing
if not completely surprising collection of evidence that shows a
president putting his own interests ahead of the country's,”
Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said in a tweet. “Today
again demonstrates why we need to change the channel in 2020.”
Buttigieg and California Senator Kamala
Harris were the only Democratic presidential candidates to weigh in
on the report as of Thursday evening.
Trump continued to insist that the
448-page report cleared him of any wrongdoing.
“As I have been saying all along, NO
COLLUSION – NO OBSTRUCTION!” Trump tweeted.
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway
told reporters that the report gave Trump a “clean bill of health.”
“It should make people feel really
great that a campaign I managed to its successful end did not collude
with any Russians,” she said. “We're accepting apologies today,
too, for anybody who feels the grace in offering them.”
Democrats and analysts, however,
disagreed, noting that Mueller wrote that he had found “substantial
evidence” that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey due to his
“unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not
personally under investigation.”
New York Representative Jerry Nadler,
chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a press conference
that the report outlines “disturbing evidence” that Trump engaged
in obstruction of justice. He also called on Mueller to testify
before his committee.
(Related: Trump
says he would like to run against Pete Buttigieg.)