Mueller to Attorney General Barr: You “did not fully capture” my report

[Zippyjuan]

Barr is testifying to Congress today. This is one of the things they want to ask him about.

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/30/18524663/mueller-barr-letter-trump-russia


It turns out that special counsel Robert Mueller was just as upset with Attorney General William Barr’s characterization of the Trump-Russia report — and the ensuing public discussion — as many Americans were.

On March 24, Barr released his four-page summary of the special counsel’s report in which he said Mueller found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And while Mueller didn’t absolve President Donald Trump of an obstruction of justice charge, Barr did, saying he didn’t think the evidence the special counsel’s team provided met that standard.

But according to multiple reports, Mueller was unhappy with Barr’s synopsis, and the type of media coverage that synopsis prompted.

Days after the attorney general sent his summary to Congress, Mueller wrote the Justice Department leadership to say that Barr’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the full report.

“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,” he continued. To rectify the situation, Mueller recommended that Barr release the full 448-page report’s introduction and executive summaries.

A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke on the phone for around 15 minutes. Mueller complained that news coverage of the summary, particularly the obstruction bit, could mislead the public about what the report said. But when Barr pressed Mueller if the special counsel believed the summary was inaccurate, Mueller said he didn’t, according to the Washington Post.

This is a big moment. It further confirms — from the highest authority — that the initial skepticism expressed by many after the release of Barr’s summary was justified. The attorney general skewed the public impression of the report before even a full sentence was released, leading many to believe that the Trump campaign had done nothing wrong whatsoever.

But the report clearly shows that’s not true. For starters, even though Mueller says he did not establish that the Trump campaign criminally conspired with Russia on illegal election interference (nor that it coordinated with Russia through either an active or tacit agreement), there were multiple instances in which the Trump campaign interacted inappropriately with Russians.

Here’s just one example: Two Trump campaign officials, campaign manager Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, were regularly providing polling information to a Russian national whom Gates believed to be a “spy.”

What’s more, the special counsel outlined 10 different “episodes” where the president may have obstructed justice, such as his multiple efforts to oust Mueller, efforts to curtail the Russia probe, and attempts to stop the public from seeing evidence. Perhaps most explosively, Mueller said in the report that Trump’s “efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

Barr, of course, didn’t mention any of that. Instead, his summary painted a pretty rosy picture for the president that led multiple experts to say it was good news for Trump.

This is likely why Mueller wanted the whole report released.

Barr has some explaining to do
Though Mueller’s letter and subsequent conversations don’t condemn the attorney general, they add to the growing suspicions that Barr is acting more like Trump’s defender than the country’s lead justice official.

The morning of the Mueller report release, April 18, Barr gave a press conference to discuss the report hours before anyone could see it. He claimed beforehand that he would focus solely on process, but instead he literally uttered the phrase “no collusion” to describe Mueller’s conclusions — providing a perfect sound bite to play on loop on cable news in the president’s favorite phrasing.

At the end, when a reporter asked if it was improper for the attorney general to spin the report to the public before it was released, Barr literally walked off the stage.

More at link.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EHRb2OSaQjHJ_00D423asMcFED0=/0x0:496x615/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:496x615):format(webp):no_upscale ()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16204325/Screen_Shot_2019_05_01_at_10.39.42_AM.png
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k7V8f1YWd6W5VZ7HdGJ0r6wF6EY=/0x0:524x387/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:524x387):format(webp):no_upscale ()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16204326/Screen_Shot_2019_05_01_at_10.39.49_AM.png

[enhanced_deficit]

CNN: William Barr is in deep trouble (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?534040-CNN-William-Barr-is-in-deep-trouble-Mexican-Judge-bias-claim-could-complicate-things&)

CNN summary should be read with grains of salt as it had been accused of pushing Deep State narratives also in the past. But Dems controlled Congress could exploit this latest twist to go after GOP-MAGA wing with renewed zeal with help from media and possibly from factions of Deep State. There are some signs of fracturing of Deep State also, neoconservative wing still seems to be siding with MAGA but critical wing seem to be on the rise again. Biden 8 points lead suddenly and stunning NYT 'anti-semitic' MAGA cartoon this week might also point to a shift among liberal wing of media also. Some indications that so called 'fake opposition' of Pelosi, Schumer might not be able to control liberal wing of Dems in time ahead.
MAGA's 'Mexican Judge' bias statements and tweet showing Deputy AG Rosenstein behind bars may also come back to complicate things further for him.

https://static01.********/images/2019/04/02/us/politics/03dc-mueller/02dc-mueller-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?533305-Thank-You-Deep-State-!&p=6779719&viewfull=1#post6779719)




Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, resigns - CNNPolitics
1 day ago - Washington (CNN)Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, submitted his resignation letter to the White House Monday

[Swordsmyth]

Another deep state "leak" has hit the tape, and as usual it has gone to the WaPo (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mueller-complained-that-barrs-letter-did-not-capture-context-of-trump-probe/2019/04/30/d3c8fdb6-6b7b-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html?utm_term=.620ca6589b2a)and NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/politics/mueller-barr.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage)almost at the exact same time... but this it's even more laughable than usual.

Click here to view the original image of 979x584px.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/mueller%20pissed.jpg
In what the WaPo breathlessly reports late on Tuesday was a rebuke and "complaint" to Attorney General William Barr, special counsel Robert Mueller sent a letter to the AG in late March, just days after Barr sent out his summary to Congress, in which Mueller stated that Barr's 4-page summary to Congress on the sweeping Russia investigation failed to "fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of Mueller’s work and conclusions, citing a copy of the letter it had obtained using its trusted deep intel sources.
This is what Mueller said to Barr, according to the leaked NSA intercept:

"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."
And if one reads just that, it certainly does not look good for Attorney General Barr, especially just one day before his first official Congressional hearing on the topic of the Mueller report: so bad that even the absolute lunatic fringe of conspiracygate - which had mercifully shut up for the past month with its daily predictions that this member of the Trump clan is going to jail, or that website will be shut down - has roared back into life with the sage assessment that "this is bad."
Pouring more fuel on the fire, the always pithy Axios adds that "this revelation about Mueller's dissatisfaction with the characterization of his report will likely escalate the growing rift over Barr's handling of the special counsel's investigation. House Democrats, who have expressed distrust in the attorney general, are set to vote on Wednesday to allow House Judiciary Committee lawyers to question Barr at Thursday's hearing."
Or maybe not, and perhaps the WaPo/NYT report is not "so bad" if one actually reads it, because once the breathless WaPo finally does come up for air, we get to paragraph 13 - a point by which most readers have turned out - to read the following real punchline in the WaPo report:

When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not...
So, Mueller felt there was confusion... but he did not think the memo was inaccurate. Wait, what's going on here and how is this even a story? Well, if we read the rest of the above sentence, we find the true object of Mueller's "complaint":

[Mueller] felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.
Which means that, as the WaPo itself reports, what Mueller was really angry with was the coverage of his report by media such as... the WaPo and the NYT?? The irony, it burns.
But wait, because if one reads even further - and yes, we know most Russiagaters have troubles getting beyond sentence one so they are excused - we find that throughout a subsequent 15 minutes telephone conversation between the special counsel and the attorney general, Mueller’s main worry was "that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation."
This goes back to what Mueller's letter requested: "that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials," the WaPo writes.
What happened then? A few weeks later Barr did just that, and absent occasional redactions - some of which apparently revealed that Russia had taped Bill Clinton (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-25/russia-taped-bill-clinton-having-phone-sex-monica-lewinsky-report)having phone sex with Monica Lewinsky - he did just that.
So if Mueller thought Barr's memo was not inaccurate, and his ire was instead targeted at the media for "misinterpreting the investigation" - although it remains unclear just how they did this, after all Mueller does not dispute that there was no collusion (yes, Russiagaters, that means you) and did not dispute Barr's conclusion of no obstruction - then what is the point of these two rather confused pieces? Well, as noted above, tomorrow Barr is scheduled to testify on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation, and the entire article is meant to focus on the headlines of the WaPo (and NYT) article, and certainly not on paragraph 13 which, not only refutes the prevailing tone that Barr did something wrong, but in fact exonerates him. But that won't have any impact on tomorrow's hearing which is now assured to be a complete kangaroo court.
As for tonight's really big, if unspoken, story - if this is the best leak Mueller has to defy Barr and the president, then Trump has indeed won.


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ler-wrote-barr (https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-30/about-letter-mueller-wrote-barr)