The leaks about the real Mueller report are starting to come, revealing a pitched battle between Robert Mueller's prosecutors and Attorney General William Barr over his portrayal of their two long years of work. In a New York Times piece titled "Some on Mueller’s Team See Their Findings as More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Revealed," we are getting the first glimpses of push back from Mueller's team about Barr's sketchy four-page summary of their 400 page-plus work product.
The Times story doesn't include a single direct quote from either Mueller's team or the Justice Department. It reads like a classic reporter's conundrum piece, where you're hearing from a lot of sources who decline to go on the record (or even on background) with a direct quote. Instead, we get third-party background confirmation that Mueller's prosecutors believe Barr has misrepresented the conclusions of their investigation.
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.
In other words, Mueller's team is getting antsy that Barr has buried their good work, and they're starting to realize that with each passing day, their findings are less likely to get traction with the American public. In addition, Barr chose to publish his own summary over others provided by Mueller's team.
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.
As several pundits had suspected, it appears that Mueller's team provided some materials that were ready for public release in their view. But Barr apparently scrapped those versions in favor of his own information-lite document, thereby starving the public of critical evidence that likely could have been shared right from the outset.
Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC Wednesday night that the leaks are noteworthy specifically because they break with Mueller's protocol up until now. "We need to stand up and pay attention to that," Figliuzzi said. "That tells us they are not happy about what the attorney general is doing." Former Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller agrees.
Figliuzzi suggested Mueller may have intended to let Congress come to its own conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice. In terms of the Russian counterintelligence investigation (i.e. collusion), Figliuzzi said no one who knows their way around those types of cases really believed it would result in criminal charges. "That almost never happens," he said. "So the team could be very upset that using a criminal metric to measure whether or not there was a conspiracy with Russia is not the way to go here when, in fact, there might be substantial evidence of collusion with Russia."
The Times piece includes a lot of indirect commenting from "people familiar with" Barr's thinking. On average, there's more push back from the Justice Department than there is sourcing from Mueller's team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel. But this is just the beginning, folks, and Barr’s people seem keenly aware of how bad he’s starting to look.