The closer the public comes to seeing some form of the actual report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the more Attorney General William Barr tries to put distance between himself and the letter he sent to Congress that supposedly provides the results of Mueller’s investigation. Despite the fact that the letter describes itself as a summary of the special counsel’s findings, and that Barr then offered to write another summary of the findings, Barr’s next missive to Congress complained about the media’s use of the term “summary.” In describing his letter and stated that his note was “not intended to be an exhaustive recounting” of the Mueller report—a statement that seemed like a sure sign that the easy pass provided by Barr was a long way from the findings delivered by Mueller.
Multiple stories on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning have indicated that investigators in the special counsel’s office aren’t happy with how Barr slanted their outcome, and that the actual report is likely far more harsh in terms of describing the action of Trump and his campaign. Which explains why Barr is once again issuing another letter to put some distance between himself and his own work.
This note, provided by Department of Justice Spokesperson Kerri Kupec, insists that “every page of the ‘confidential report’ provided to Attorney General Barr on March 22, 2019” was marked to indicate that it may contain material protected under federal law. So Barr had no choice but to write his own letter … one in which he ignored the summaries that the special counsel’s office had already provided, and didn’t include so much a sentence of the report, and wrote his response extremely narrowly to avoid huge swaths of issues.
The new memo also contains a bizarre statement that Barr doesn’t want the Mueller report to “be released in ‘serial or piecemeal fashion.’” Which might sound almost reasonable, if it wasn’t the excuse Barr is providing to the House and Senate for why he will not turn over the full report. The note concludes that Barr is continuing to redact the Mueller report “so it can be released to Congress and the public.” Which is a clear statement that Barr is not going to respond to congressional requests for the full report. And that he does not intend to release the full report to either Congress or the public.
Meanwhile, Trump has joined in with an attack on the New York Times report, saying that “they probably had no sources at all!” This follows on days in which Trump has continued to hint that he may still move to prevent the full report from being released.