BOMBSHELL: Now we know why William Barr is afraid to face House Democrats
By Jennifer Rubin
May 1 at 9:45 AM
washingtonpost.com
The Post dropped a bombshell Tuesday night:
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the two longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president.
At the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) responded with a quick statement:
The Special Counsel was concerned, among other things, that the Attorney General’s mischaracterization “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 also requested that the Department release the introduction and executive summaries prepared by the Special Counsel’s team—as I did at the time.
The Special Counsel’s concerns reflect our own. The Attorney General should not have taken it upon himself to describe the Special Counsel’s findings in a light more favorable to the President. It was only a matter of time before the facts caught up to him.
Attorney General Barr also should not have withheld this letter from Congress for as long as he has. I have demanded a copy from the Department of Justice.
Weeks ago, it was apparent to me and others who compared the Barr letter and the Mueller report that Barr had grossly spun the report (to the point of distorting its findings) and inserted himself into the process, which as Mueller pointed out, was improper in light of the Office of Legal Counsel memo taking the tool of indictment away from prosecutors.
Now we know that although Mueller raised a red flag in writing with Barr, the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein proceeded with a news conference that was even more outrageously partisan than the letter (e.g., Barr argued that Trump’s attacks on the investigation were understandable since he was “frustrated”). Acting like Trump’s defense counsel, Barr insisted that Trump, who refused to sit down for an interview with the special counsel and was found to have pressured witnesses to lie, “'fully cooperated” with the probe.
[ Greg Sargent: Five questions for William Barr, in light of new Mueller revelations]
Rosenstein has publicly admonished those criticizing Barr — without letting on that the special counsel had the very same concerns about Barr mischaracterizing the report. “He’s being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that he’s trying to mislead people, I think, is just completely bizarre,” said Rosenstein. Rather, it is bizarre that having received Mueller’s objections, Rosenstein continued to defend Barr and the misleading spinning of the report.
We also have a darn good idea why Barr has thrown a temper tantrum, threatening not to appear for questions from a skilled House Judiciary Committee counsel. No doubt he feared that this would all come out — the dissembling, the conflict with Mueller, the refusal to provide Mueller’s summaries. A careful attorney, using Barr’s letter, his news conference transcript, the Mueller letter to Barr, and the redacted Mueller report, would be positioned to confirm the attorney general’s political hackery. Faced with the prospect of humiliation and confirmation of his lack of candor, Barr has tried to force Nadler to abandon the idea of questioning by counsel. No such luck.
[ Greg Sargent: Five questions for William Barr, in light of new Mueller revelations]
Taking a step back, however, it should be apparent that Barr has lost all credibility, politicized the report and the Justice Department more generally and has, in contrast to former attorney general Jeff Sessions, become the president’s political fixer, in violation of his oath to serve as the American people’s chief lawyer.
Barr should seriously consider resigning. (That would be one way to avoid testifying before the House Judiciary Committee.) If he does not, and then either fails to appear (after a subpoena is issued) or cannot explain his own deception, the House, as I have argued, should begin impeachment hearings. He’s not acting as the American people’s lawyer and therefore should not be in that post. The longer he stays, the more damage he causes to the integrity of the Justice Department.
I’m forced to admit that I’m puzzled as to why Barr thought this wouldn’t all come out. Mueller wrote him a letter (that should have been his first clue that his old friend was going to leave us a crystal-clear picture of what occurred). Mueller was going to testify. The committee, in all likelihood, would get at the very least the redacted Mueller report and find the discrepancies between that and Barr’s spin.
How was Barr ever going to get away with this? And more important, why would he throw his reputation and legacy away to go down in history as the clumsy spinner who covered for a lawless president? Someone should ask him — if he shows up for questioning on Thursday. |
