Robert Mueller disliked Attorney General William Barr’s four-page characterization of the special counsel’s two-year Russia investigation, and journalists are all over it.
“Mueller told the attorney general that the depiction of his findings failed to capture ‘context, nature, and substance’ of probe,” the Washington Post reported, citing a now-public letter the special counsel sent to the attorney general.
What is odd about journalists’ frenzied reactions to the report (“BIG,” “Whoa,” “SIREN,” “Boom,” “blockbuster,” “HUGE,” etc.) is that Mueller’s letter tells us nothing we do not already know from having read Barr’s summary letter and cross-referenced it against the full Russia report.
We know how Barr characterized the report. We also know what the report itself says. Why is Mueller’s letter, which does not actually accuse Barr of misleading anyone on purpose, being treated like a game-changing piece of news?
It seems clear the excited responses from reporters are not so much about the content of the letter (they were already reacting like this and this before the letter was even made public), but that it allows them to relitigate the timing and substance of the Mueller report itself. In other words, this is a weird thing to get all excited about. But I suppose you have to work with what you have when your narrative about presidential collusion with Russia has been exposed as a hoax.
Luckily for members of the press, the Mueller letter, which was made available hours after the Post published its scoop Tuesday evening, does indeed hold news value. It also does no favors for the attorney general, whose four-page summary of the investigation was used by President Trump to declare “complete and total exoneration.”
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions,” reads Mueller’s letter.
It adds, “We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. 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.”
Now, there is a section of the Post story that alleges, “When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation … ” Many on the Right believe these lines exonerate the attorney general. Some even believe these lines upend the entire purpose of the Post report. But it is important to note that the details of the supposed conversation between Barr and Mueller come via the Post’s anonymous sources, identified as working for Barr’s Justice Department.
So, take it all with a large grain of salt.
