Rep. Justin Amash tore into Attorney General William Barr for his handling of the rollout of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
In a 25-tweet thread on Tuesday, the Michigan Republican accused Barr of misrepresenting Mueller’s findings in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.
He capped the tweet tirade by advocating for some sort of pushback to Barr’s “misrepresentations.”
After receiving Mueller’s report, Barr wrote and released a letter on March 24 describing Barr’s own decision not to indict the president for obstruction of justice. That letter selectively quotes and summarizes points in Mueller’s report in misleading ways.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr’s letter doesn’t mention those issues when explaining why Mueller chose not to make a prosecutorial decision. He instead selectively quotes Mueller in a way that makes it sound—falsely—as if Mueller’s decision stemmed from legal/factual issues specific to Trump’s actions.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
In noting why Barr thought the president’s intent in impeding the investigation was insufficient to establish obstruction, Barr selectively quotes Mueller to make it sound as if his analysis was much closer to Barr’s analysis than it actually was:
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
But Mueller’s quote is taken from a section in which he describes other improper motives Trump could have had and notes: “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” None of that is in Barr’s letter.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Mueller: “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr declined; he allowed the confusion to fester and only released the materials three weeks later with the full redacted report. In the interim, Barr testified before a House committee and was misleading about his knowledge of Mueller’s concerns:
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr absurdly replied: “No, I don’t…I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” Yet Mueller had directly raised those concerns to Barr, and Barr says he “suspect[s]” they “probably” wanted more materials put out, as if Mueller hadn’t directly told him that.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr notes that Mueller did not “find any conspiracy to violate U.S. law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign.” He then declares that Mueller found “no collusion” and implies falsely that the investigation was baseless.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
In truth, Mueller’s report describes concerning contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and people in or connected to the Russian government.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
It’s wrong to suggest that the fact that Mueller did not choose to indict anyone for this means there wasn’t a basis to investigate whether it amounted to a crime or “collusion,” or whether it was in fact part of Russia’s efforts to help Trump’s candidacy.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
The report says the president’s counsel was told that interviewing him was “vital” to Mueller’s investigation and that it would be in the interest of the public and the presidency. Still Trump refused.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Ultimately, the special counsel “recogniz[ed] that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily” and chose not to subpoena him because of concerns that the resulting “potentially lengthy constitutional litigation” would delay completion of the investigation.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people. This will continue if those who have read the report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
The tweets come a few days after Trump delegated Barr sweeping powers to declassify documents related to the origins of the Russia investigation in order to determine if there was any politically motivated misconduct by federal officials.
Last week, Amash became the first Republican in Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment and accused Barr of misleading the public about Mueller’s findings. Amash said he reached his conclusions about Trump and Barr after “carefully and completely” reading the public version of Mueller’s report and consulting with staff.
Mueller completed his 22-month-long investigation earlier this year.
After Barr released a summary of the report’s principal conclusions, the report itself as released in April with redactions, showing Mueller did not establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The report also laid out 10 instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, but Mueller declined to say whether he committed obstruction, citing a Justice Department guideline that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Barr concluded Mueller’s investigation did not find “sufficient” evidence to determine whether Trump obstructed justice. Barr defended the president’s behavior during the investigation as Trump being “frustrated and angry” with a process he believed was politically motivated.
