Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday he suspects special counsel Robert Mueller’s team “wanted more” out of his summary of the final report for the Russia investigation.
“I suspect that they probably wanted more put out,” Barr testified during a House Appropriations panel hearing. “But, in my view I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of being under inclusive or over inclusive but also would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should wait everything coming out at once.”
Days after Mueller submitted his roughly 400-page-long final report to the Justice Department last month, Barr provided a four-page summary to Congress.
This summary said Mueller did not establish the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and did not find President Trump committed obstruction of justice. Although Mueller also did not exonerate the president, Barr said he concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish a crime.
Further adding fuel to their ire were reports last week from the New York Times and Washington Post in which anonymous sources said members of Mueller’s team were frustrated with the way Barr portrayed the findings of their yearslong investigation in a four-page summary.
Reacting to those reports, Trump tore into Mueller’s team on Sunday, accusing the “angry Democrats” of “illegally leaking” information to the media.
