Just in time for Attorney General William Barr to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about his handling of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post dropped a piece that the disappointed #Resistance was keen to deem a bombshell.
“Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context of Trump probe,'” the Post declared, leading to another outrage cycle over Barr’s objectivity and fitness to preside over the Justice Department.
[Read: Mueller letter to Barr criticizing summary released]
There are just a few problems. First, Mueller did not impugn the accuracy of Barr’s letter, but rather that he had defied Mueller’s request in how he introduce the report to the public. According to the complete letter from Mueller, he requested once during a March 5 meeting and again on the day that Barr released his letter, which summarized the principle conclusions of the Mueller report, that Barr instead immediately release the introductions and executive summaries straight from the original report.
But Mueller apparently did not take issue with the explicit accuracy of Barr’s letter. Rather, he complained about the “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of the investigation” that ensued.
For all the fracas following the Post report, it critically noted that Mueller asserted that Barr’s letter was not “inaccurate,” but instead that “the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation.”
But then there’s a problem with Mueller’s request. Barr released his letter to Congress roughly 48 hours after obtaining the unredacted Mueller report. The introductions and executive summaries from both volumes of the report total 18 pages, five of which required redactions. It’s possible that, from a purely practical matter, Barr found it impossible to prepare those pages for release by the end of the weekend.
But even more significantly, Barr had to handle Mueller punting the obstruction decision to him. Mueller refused to make a decision on the obstruction charge, writing in the report that “a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.”
As Barr explained in his letter:
It’s possible that Barr defied Mueller’s request, not for practical and substantive reasons, but rather because he wanted to cover up the actual conclusions of the Mueller report. But the public report, just 8% of which is redacted, is already out. If Barr attempted a cover-up, it may very well be the weakest political cover-up in American history.
If Mueller wanted President Trump or members of his campaign brought up on obstruction of justice charges, he should have said so. By punting the decision to Barr, he left the attorney general with no choice but to insert his own judgment on the initial release of the summary of the report’s principle conclusions.
