Thursday, April 4, 2019
The exoneration that wasn't
Despite some of the ridiculous preening and outright delusional statements by President Unintelligible in the wake of the release of the Mueller report, he's hardly off the hook in many respects - especially concerning the idea that he was somehow exonerated by it. Even the four page summary released by his handpicked Attorney General William Barr didn't say that. And then there's this:
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.
I'll be cautious here and say that there's any number of potential - but entirely hypothetical - reasons as to why that four-pager came off as being an attempt to shove the genie back in the bottle and stopper it up, but one of the potentially most important is that the full report could possibly detail whatever high-level, behind the scenes attempts Team Trump engaged in in terms of intimidation tactics towards Mueller's staff. Besides his Tweets and public statements, that is, and they were bad enough. But the stuff Trump didn't want out in public? It could actually be far worse
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.
I'll be cautious here and say that there's any number of potential - but entirely hypothetical - reasons as to why that four-pager came off as being an attempt to shove the genie back in the bottle and stopper it up, but one of the potentially most important is that the full report could possibly detail whatever high-level, behind the scenes attempts Team Trump engaged in in terms of intimidation tactics towards Mueller's staff. Besides his Tweets and public statements, that is, and they were bad enough. But the stuff Trump didn't want out in public? It could actually be far worse
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