The Mueller report comes out Thursday. Expect it to be a political prop

Published April 17, 2019 7:23pm ET



On Thursday, a fight over two sentences becomes a fight over hundreds of pages. When Attorney General William Barr sent his letter summarizing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report last month, there were just two sentences, or perhaps parts of sentences, from Mueller’s actual report quoted in the letter:

[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.
… while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Those two snippets were more than enough to set off a firestorm of speculation, criticism, and the requisite partisan spin that fuels Washington. President Trump even claimed total exoneration based those few dozen words.

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