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So many things to say about Pete Williams' exclusive interview with Attorney General William Barr, which partially aired on MSNBC Tuesday afternoon. Williams effectively gave Barr a free pass on NBC's platform to gaslight America with very little, if any, pushback against the lies and uncorroborated disinformation Barr was spewing, but let's not get too distracted by that.
The main takeaway from our first glimpses of that interview is that Donald Trump and his chief defender Barr want to talk endlessly about the Russia probe to the near exclusion of Ukraine. In other words, the Russia investigation was so big and sprawling and divisive in nature that it provides endlessly fertile ground for them to gaslight America, declare Trump an unfair victim of the deep state, and animate Trump's base. Ukraine, on the other hand, is proving a little too cut-and-dried to confuse people with after Democrats nailed Trump to a wall.
The thing to keep in mind when watching Barr pontificate about the Russia probe is that he's offering nothing more than his suspicions and beliefs on a matter that the Justice Department's inspector general investigated for more than a year. Barr is offering subjective conjecture; Michael Horowitz, the IG, produced a 400-page report informed by interviews and documentary evidence.
At one point, Barr told Williams, "I think there were gross abuses" and "inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI." The operative words there are "I think," not "I know" or "I found" or "I uncovered."
Barr also made claims that we objectively know to be lies.
“There was and never has been any evidence of collusion and yet this campaign and the president’s administration has been dominated by this investigation into what turns out to be completely baseless,” Barr said. That's just a bald-faced lie. Indeed, there was evidence of collusion; Mueller just concluded that it didn't meet the level of provable criminal conspiracy.
Barr also blamed the FBI for the fact that Trump ran one of the most corrupt campaigns in history, saying of the Russia probe, "This is first time in history that this has been done to a presidential campaign." Note: "has been done to" ... Trump's always the victim. And yeah, it was pretty unprecedented, likely because it's also the first time in history that a presidential campaign has had more than 100 contacts with associates of a foreign adversary.
More Barr: "The greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state—principally law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies—both to spy on political opponents but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of an election."
He's joking, right?! That is exactly what he and Trump are doing right now. Exactly. Pure projection. Also, he totally accused President Obama and the FBI of trying to rig the election against Trump.
There's more where that came from, but this gives you a taste of just how committed Bill Barr is to using his perch to spread disinformation and foster confusion among the American people.