Month: May 2019

Bill Barr’s snitty testimony

by digby

Emptywheel has a nice succinct round-up of what we learned from Bill Barr today:

Bill Barr just finished testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It was remarkable.

Among the opinions the Attorney General espoused are that:

You only need to call the FBI when being offered campaign assistance by a foreign intelligence service, not a foreigner

It’s okay to lie about the many dangles hostile foreign countries make to a political campaign, including if you accepted those dangles

Because Trump was being falsely accused (it’s not clear of what, because the report doesn’t address the most aggressive accusation, and many other accusations against Trump and his campaign are born out by the Mueller Report), it’s okay that he sought to undermine it through illegal means

It’s okay for the President to order the White House Counsel to lie, even about an ongoing investigation

It’s okay to fire the FBI Director for refusing to confirm or deny an ongoing investigation, which is DOJ policy not to do

It’s okay for the Attorney General to call lawfully predicated DOJ investigative techniques “spying” because Fox News does

Public statements — including threatening someone’s family — cannot be subornation of perjury

You can exhaust investigative options in a case having only obtained contemptuous responses covering just a third of the investigation from the key subject of it

The Attorney General also got himself in significant trouble with his answers to a question from Charlie Crist about whether he knew why Mueller’s team was concerned about press reports. His first answer was that he didn’t know about the team’s concerns because he only spoke with Mueller. But he later described, in the phone call he had with Mueller, that Mueller discussed his team’s concerns. Worse still, when called on the fact that the letter — as opposed to Barr’s potentially suspect representation of the call — didn’t mention the press response, he suggested Mueller’s letter was “snitty” and so probably written by a staffer, meaning he assumed that the letter itself was actually from a staffer.

But that’s not the most amazing thing.

The most amazing thing is that, when Corey Booker asked Barr if he thought it was right to share polling data with Russians — noting that had Trump done so with a Super PAC, rather than a hostile foreign country, it would be illegal — Barr appeared to have no clue that Paul Manafort had done so. He even asked whom Manafort shared the data with, apparently not knowing he shared it with a guy that Rick Gates said he believes is a Russian spy.

That’s remarkable, because he basically agreed with Ben Sasse that Deripaska — with whom Manafort was sharing this campaign data — was a “bottom-feeding scum-sucker.”

So the Attorney General absolved the President of obstruction without having the faintest clue what actions the investigation of which Trump successfully obstructed by floating a pardon to Manafort.

This is what stunned me:

In one of his more forceful defenses of Trump, Barr said Wednesday that the president had been “falsely accused” of coordinating with Russia and that it helped inform the decision to say that Trump could not be charged with obstructing justice.

Barr was responding to questions from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) about why the absence of an underlying crime — in this case, that Trump conspired with Russia — mattered in the obstruction case. Leahy pointed out that obstruction could prevent investigators from identifying an underlying crime.

Barr said this situation was unique because the president has the “constitutional authority to supervise proceedings,” and if he feels a proceeding was “not well founded” or “groundless,” he could legally shut it down.

“The president does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow it to run its course,” Barr said. “That’s important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here . . . do involve the exercise of the president’s constitutional authority, and we now know that he was being falsely accused.”

In other words, the president is above the law. There is no one else in this country who can proclaim that he is being falsely accused and then shut down an investigation. Only a president. Or, more precisely, a king.

And, by the way, he was not falsely accused. He was clearly happy to benefit from a Russian government sabotage of his opponent and it remains unknown whether or not he was under Russian influence when he did it. He sure as hell has acted like he was during the campaign and after.

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Everyone should tweet this quote at Trump

by digby

His top toadie, Bill Barr, made this headline today:

“No, I didn’t exonerate. I said that we did not believe that there was sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction offense which is the job of the justice department.”

So much for “TOTAL EXONERATION!”

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Barr should be removed for this alone

by digby

Not only does Barr hesitate, but watch closely what Barr ends up narrowly saying: Barr says only that presidential campaigns offered dirt from a “foreign intelligence service” should report to the FBI. He seemed to wait and dodge to avoid saying “foreign government.” NUTS. https://t.co/TpWxxGonXV

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) May 1, 2019

I guess it speaks to my continued naivete but I find this absolutely shocking. Barr had been asked in an earlier round about whether or not a there was anything illegal about foreign nations infiltrating and the American political system and he hedged. Coons followed up with this question and Barr’s answer was chilling. He knows foreign government can hear him and he knows they are going to hire cutouts and intermediaries again — and he wants them to do it. I wish I knew why these people are so sure that foreign adversaries are going to help Republicans, which they obviously do, but I’m almost afraid to dine out.

And for those who think Barr is some kind of goodwill ambassador for legitimate international understanding when he says there’s nothing wrong with political actors being paid by foreign interests to infiltrate political campaigns, he also hinted that he was interested in looking into foreign influence in “the government.”

 If he goes the way of the partisan “purge” of the top brass of the FBI that had been alarmed by Trump’s relationship with Russia,  that really is McCarthyism, only this time it will be purging those who are concerned about Russia rather than those who are sympathetic to it.

This guy is something else.

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Trump may end up yearning for the good old days of the Mueller Witch Hunt

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

The big news today is the Washington Post’s Tuesday night’s bombshell report revealing that Robert Mueller was not a happy prosecutor when Attorney General Bill Barr wrote that four-page PR document. He wrote his own letter to Barr and then spoke with him on the phone in the days after, complaining that Barr’s summary  “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the Special Counsel’s work.

According to DOJ veterans, this was a very big deal:

Exactly. It’s a declaration of war, as I just tried to explain on @donlemon because everybody realizes it’s a loaded bomb that could go off anytime. That’s why I said for the laconic and obedient Mueller, it’s almost like lighting yourself on fire in front of the DOJ. https://t.co/PPw8L592PT

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) May 1, 2019

This uproar will likely last for a few news cycles, which probably has the president quite relieved. He’s happy to have the Congress battle the DOJ instead of focusing on the problem that’s really keeping him up at night. That would be the congressional inquiries into his personal and business finances. I think he’d rather be impeached for betraying the country than have his books opened up to the public.

He’s got his hands full. The Ways and Means Committee is chasing his tax returns. The Financial Services and Intelligence Committees have subpoenaed his banking records. The US Attorneys Office in the Southern District of New York is looking into inauguration fund irregularities and that campaign finance case with Trump named as “individual one” is still out there. State of New York regulators and the Attorney General have opened investigations into possible bank and insurance fraud by the Trump Organization. And two separate cases involving Trump’s alleged violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution are currently wending their way through the courts, one of which passed a big hurdle on Tuesday.

There are also 14 unknown investigations that were referred by Mueller to other jurisdictions. Trump’s loyal consiglieri William Barr will likely have filled him in on those but unless they are dropping them, he has to be worried. Any federal investigation involving him will likely look into his finances. And as we all know, that is his “red line” which for some reason he believes he has a right to draw.

He seems to be very confused about the separation of powers, complaining that the Democratic House majority isn’t “impartial”  and is just trying to win 2020, which means he needn’t cooperate with their requests. This is also known as “politics” a profession he probably should have thought twice about entering if he didn’t want anyone looking at his finances, particularly since he refuses to divest himself of his companies and spends most weekends as president promoting them.

The New York Times deep dive into the Trump family’s systematic tax fraud over the course of many decades should certainly be enough to justify the release of Trump’s tax returns. If laws need to be changed to prevent such activity, the congress has every right to see them as do the American people.
And as the ongoing investigations by Pro-Publica and WNYC have shown in their “Trump Inc” podcast series, the ground is incredibly fertile for investigations into the business. The Trump Organization has been a cesspool of fraudulent activity for decades.  (The piece about the branded development projects in which Donald and Ivanka Trump lied to buyers and falsified documents to banks alone is mind-boggling all on its own.)

Trump’s been stonewalling all the congressional requests, refusing to hand over documents and instructing the various agencies not to cooperate. The administration has said they will fight subpoenas and contempt citations in court and the Justice Department is apparently willing to fight for his right to do whatever he wants. Finally, this week, he took the extraordinary step of suing the banks that have been subpoenaed by the Financial Services and Intelligence committees looking into possible compromise and conflicts of interest with Trump and foreign governments and domestic businesses.

From what most of the legal observers say, the lawsuit is almost comically absurd:

OF NOTE: Trump’s lawsuit against Deutsche Bank attributes to House Democrats a bunch of things they didn’t say.

And one is actually the headline  of a story about the NY state attorney general (not a quote) https://t.co/86WaKIqEYz: pic.twitter.com/5VWtj3BC67

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 30, 2019

The suit claims the Congress is harassing his children, Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka, neglecting to note that all three are executives in the Trump Organization and Ivanka is a senior adviser to the president. His lawyers, as usual, are anything but professional.

Trump likes to sue, we know that.  He learned to do it at the knee of his mentor, Roy Cohn who, according to journalist Marie Brenner, derived his power “largely from his ability to scare potential adversaries with hollow threats and spurious lawsuits.”  Brenner writes that they bonded over an early case of Trump bigotry:

As Donald Trump would later tell the story, he ran into Cohn for the first time at Le Club, a members-only nightspot in Manhattan’s East 50s, where models and fashionistas and Eurotrash went to be seen. “The government has just filed suit against our company,” Trump explained, “saying that we discriminated against blacks . . . . What do you think I should do?” 

“Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court and let them prove you discriminated,” Cohn shot back. The Trumps would soon retain Cohn to represent them.

Cohn went on to teach Trump everything he knew.

Whether or not the president will prevail in this suit is unknown. But it’s possible that he’ll at least be able to delay the release of financial records until after the election. Trump had better hope so anyway because House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff announced the hire of a heavy hitter, Patrick Fallon, former chief of the FBI’s Financial Crimes Section, according to two sources familiar with the move. What that indicates is that the Intelligence Committee is going to be looking at Trump’s foreign business deals.

Mueller’s investigation hewed closely to a mandate pertaining to criminal conduct the 2016 election and Russian interference and his report does mention the Trump Tower Moscow project as a potential point of leverage. But there is so much more that goes back years and points to a strong suspicion of money-laundering. Trump has brushed off the charge in the past saying simply that he might have sold some condos to Russian buyers. He did. And those sales are very suspicious. By all accounts, if anyone can untangle the details of those transactions, its Fallon.

For the first two years of his presidency, Trump was under scrutiny by a tight-lipped prosecutor with a narrow mandate. Now he’s dealing with at least a half dozen congressional probes happening in the middle of his re-election campaign, run by people who like the cameras just as much as he does. He may soon find himself wishing for the good old days of the Mueller Witch Hunt.

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Bill Barr, unitary executive extremist

by digby

Grover Norquist always said that Republicans only need a president who can hold a pen, meaning that it didn’t matter whether he or she was a “real conservative” as long as they could get elected and sign rightwing legislation, specifically tax cuts, issue orders to dismantle the “administrative state,” and pack the courts with extremist judges. Right-wing ideologues have long pressed for an authoritarian strongman definition of the presidency which they call the “unitary executive.” Their dream has been delivered by the incompetent boob Donald Trump.

The GOP Congress delivered on the tax cuts and functionaries in the Executive Branch are working feverishly to destroy the regulations that keep us healthy and safe. Bill Barr has taken on the job of perversely ensuring that this erratic, bizarre presidency solidifies unaccountable presidential power.

The long-term goals of the conservative movement are being realized. No wonder they all back Trump unquestioningly.

Here’s a piece of a long Politico profile of Bill Barr that will send chills down your spine:

Now that Barr has provided him with political cover from Mueller’s report, Trump is lavishing him with praise. Days after Barr released a four-page summary of the report’s conclusions that Mueller himself found problematic, Trump told his friend and Fox News host Sean Hannity that Barr was a “great gentleman” and a “great man.” In a tweet on Monday, Trump gloated that while Barr is “highly respected,” Democrats now pretend not to remember their onetime hero Bob Mueller.

Other Republicans are just as exuberant about Barr, who they believe embodies the ruthless competence of previous Republican administrations that has often been sorely lacking in the current one. After his combative news conference moments before the release of the Mueller report, one GOP operative wished aloud that Trump would drop Vice President Mike Pence from the ticket in 2020 and add Barr instead. Other prominent Republicans speak of him in almost adulatory terms. “Barr is the closest thing we have to [former Vice President Dick] Cheney,” said Chuck Cooper, a conservative litigator and Barr ally who, like the attorney general, has led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. “He’s a man. He has a very strong sense of purpose and confidence.”

To Democrats, Barr is merely shilling for Trump, putting politics ahead of the law — “waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump,” as House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler put it. To them, he is an expression of the corruption of the Republican party under Trump, one among many conservatives who might have had second thoughts about the president but now follow in lockstep. That’s a theme they will press in two Congressional hearings this week, beginning with a Wednesday session before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But people who know Barr and have tracked his career for years say the story is more complicated. Trump and Barr barely have a personal relationship, according to White House aides. Barr may have donated $2,700 to Trump in the 2016 general election, but only after he threw $55,000 to Jeb Bush in the primaries. They say that it’s not Donald Trump whom Barr is fighting for, but a vision of the presidency.

Advocates for the “unitary executive”
Barr’s first interaction with the Trump White House came in the spring of 2017 when he met with Pence to talk about representing him in the Mueller probe. Barr waved off the offer, instead recommending a handful of friends to do the job. About a year later, when the president’s children were unhappy with Trump’s legal representation, Barr got another phone call — and turned down another offer, this one to join the president’s personal legal team.

In late 2018, when the White House was on the hunt for a new attorney general, Barr might as well have been on speed dial. He is a longtime friend of White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who worked for him at the Department of Justice in the 1990s and who pressed him to take the job. Again, Barr begged off, urging the White House to consider his friend J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge — or former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl — or his Kirkland & Ellis partner Mark Filip.

Ultimately, his friends managed to talk him into it. “We had discussions over a period of time, and I encouraged him to take it,” said George Terwilliger, a conservative attorney and longtime friend of Barr’s.

Barr’s social and professional circle was critical in drawing him into Trump’s orbit. Barr pals, including Terwilliger, Cooper, Luttig and former Virginia Attorney General Richard Cullen are part of a group of elite conservative litigators who were once wunderkinds in the the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. They grew up together and have fought countless political battles alongside one another.

The Trump era has been no different. Cullen represents Pence in the Russia probe. Cooper represents former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And Luttig was the runner-up for the attorney general post when Trump tapped Barr in December, according to multiple sources.

They are united by a firm belief in a theory of robust presidential power dusted off by Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese. Known among legal scholars as the theory of the “unitary executive,” they argue that the Constitution grants presidents broad control of the executive branch, including — to take a salient Trump-era example — the power to fire an FBI director for any reason at all.

Barr made his first imprint in this battle as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the George H.W. Bush administration, when he authored a controversial memo giving the FBI the right to seize fugitives abroad without the consent of the foreign government in question. As deputy attorney general, he told George H.W. Bush he had the power to send U.S. military forces into Iraq without congressional authorization

Conservative heroes from Robert Bork to the late Justice Antonin Scalia have been advocates of this theory. Bork carried out President Richard M. Nixon’s directive, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox because he determined the president had the right to do so. Scalia, in a 1988 dissenting opinion, argued that the president had the power to fire any executive branch official, including an independent counsel.

“A lot of The Federalist Society heroes are people who participated in or were advocates for the unitary executive,” said University of California law professor John Yoo, himself a proponent of the theory, which became a flash point in the George W. Bush administration after Yoo penned memos advising Bush that the Constitution grants the president virtually unlimited authority to use force abroad and justifies the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

Enter Bill Barr. Before he agreed to take the attorney general job, he drew on the unitary executive theory in the 18-page memo he sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last June — a document his critics say amounted to a veiled application for his current job. In that memo, Barr argued that obstruction of justice is limited to things like witness tampering and destroying evidence and that the president has “complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding.” The implication: Trump was acting on firm constitutional ground when he fired FBI director James Comey, regardless of his motivation, and that doing so was not an effort to obstruct justice. Neither were Trump’s subsequent, but thwarted, moves to fire Mueller himself.

Described by his friends as supremely confident in his views, Barr said at his confirmation hearing that he had circulated the memo widely “so that other lawyers would have the benefit of my views.”

“Supremely confident” doesn’t even begin to describe it. There is a touch of megalomania in Barr, a mirror of what a president like Trump would look like if he weren’t a simple demagogue. If they get away with this, there may be no going back.

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The Mueller letter

by digby

House Judiciary has just received a copy of the letter Special Counsel Mueller sent to AG Barr pic.twitter.com/VTeSmiHOuL— Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) May 1, 2019

As Josh Marshall says, it’s worse than we thought. Here’s his breakdown of the timeline:

Mueller lays out a timeline of contacts between his office and Barr around March 24, when the attorney general wrote a letter to Congress that purported to outline top-line conclusions about the special counsel’s report.

The contacts show that the special counsel was in close contact with Barr as he released the letter and in the days after.

Below is a timeline of the contacts revealed in Mueller’s letter:

March 5: The Special Counsel meets with Barr and informs him that “the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office’s work and conclusions.”

March 24, early afternoon: The Special Counsel reiterates the purpose of the Mueller report’s executive summaries and introductions.

March 24, late afternoon: Barr sends his now-notorious letter to Congress, which was made public immediately, purporting to outline the Mueller report’s top-line conclusions.

March 25, morning: The Special Counsel’s office informs the Justice Department that his letter to Congress “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.” It’s not clear who communicated with whom in this instance, or in what form.

March 27: Mueller sends a letter to Barr complaining about the March 24 letter and urging him to release the executive summaries.

Mueller was pretty frantic about the PR spin Barr was offering up. He understood that his findings were being mischaracterized and that this could end up shackling congressional efforts to hold Trump accountable. He may also have been a little frantic about the fact that the spin was likely making the nation more vulnerable to further election sabotage. Indeed, he may have seen the specter of the DOJ shackling the ongoing counter-intelligence investigation in order to prop up Trump.

Barr said this morning that he had no problem with Mueller testifying. But Democrats say the DOJ has not responded to their request to set up a date.

Barr is a piece of work. He is arrogant and blatant in his defiant defense of the president’s unethical behavior. And he seems to be going out of his way to throw his weight around, coming close to saying Mueller is his underling who didn’t do his job and so the boss had to step in and do it for him.

He is operating as the president’s lawyer. Openly using the word “we” in defending him:

Barr says, while speaking about McGahn's possible testimony: "We haven't waived executive privilege" pic.twitter.com/8Fx0az0kx0— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 1, 2019

The Democrats are going to have to step up their game and do it quickly.

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Defiled hard
by Tom Sullivan

Why did Barr do it?

Last night’s news that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote to Attorney General William Barr to complain about Barr’s four-page, non-summary summary of the special counsel’s findings in the Trump-Russia investigation unleashed a flood of commentary. Left unanswered is why Barr has risked himself for Donald Trump.

Natasha Bertrand tweets, “Something I’m hearing from lots of former DOJ/FBI folks tonight is just how rare & significant it is for a DOJ official, especially an institutionalist like Mueller, to ‘go to paper’ like this. ‘We are conditioned not to’ do that, Chuck Rosenberg told me.”

In the letter obtained by the Washington Post, Mueller complained that Barr’s characterization of the findings “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the special counsel team’s work, leaving the public with a distorted view of what the Mueller report contains. Barr’s April 18 press conference describing the findings in “Trumpian language” prior to releasing the redacted report solidified the perception that Barr was Trump’s new Roy Cohn.

Unnamed sources told the Post Mueller did not take issue with public discussions of the Russian investigation section of the report. Meaning Mueller is unhappy with seeing the obstruction of justice investigation into the president’s campaign spun as exoneration.

Mueller followed up his letter with a fifteen-minute phone call to Barr:

Justice Department officials said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter and that it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page memo to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.

Barr appears to have misled Congress as well as the American people on that. The leaked letter has spurred calls for Barr’s resignation or impeachment, especially if he refuses to appear before the House Judiciary Committee. One theory on the timing of the leaked letter by “we didn’t know” anonymous sources is that Barr allies in the department hope to dampen the impact of his scheduled testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning at 10 a.m. EDT. Barr used strategic delay and disinformation to manage perceptions for the president’s benefit before. The leaked letter will dominate the news for days and keep Democrats focused on Barr rather than on the president. (His prepared statement is here. He doubles down on his decision to declare Trump innocent.)

But why Barr would accept this job and defile his reputation and that of his department to protect Donald Trump is as much a mystery as what the sitting president is hiding in his taxes. Barr does not have to face Trump voters in the next election as Republicans on Capitol Hill do. Why did Barr do it?

Trumpism has characteristics of a cult. The power Trump wields over followers is something to behold, and not just among his red-hat, rally faithful. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the former military lawyer, has become a full-fledged, fawning acolyte. Republicans such as Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida are far lesser intellects who live to touch the hem of their master’s garment. They will go down with the ship if Trump asks.

But Barr volunteered for this job. While uniquely qualified to run interference for a president, the former attorney general came out of “retirement” to take the attorney general’s job Trump offered. His behavior suggests he too is a true believer. In what is unclear.

Now he risks himself to protect the most corrupt president in American history.

First, let’s do a head count of Trump associates already caught in the Mueller probe. Here is a list via Vox of those already convicted:

1. Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, on one count of lying to the FBI
2. Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager and Manafort protégé, on one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of making false statements to FBI agents
3. George Papadopoulos, a low-level Trump foreign policy adviser, for making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the campaign
4. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a possible Trump Organization real estate project in Moscow that was under consideration during the 2016 presidential campaign.
5. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy against the US and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone remains the subject of investigation.

Barr’s motivations remain a mystery. The fate of many of Trump hangers-on is not. Knowing the list of the indicted keeps growing, last night’s news brought to mind John McClane of the Die Hard franchise telling Trump, “I mean, you’ve GOT to be running out of bad guys by now, right? … I mean, how does that work? Got some kind of service or something? Some kind of 800 number? 1-800-HENCHMEN?”

Robert Mueller isn’t happy

by digby

Well, well, well it looks like Mueller wasn’t happy with his old pal Bill Barr’s little damage control strategy:

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.

At the time the letter was sent on March 27, Barr had announced that Mueller had not found a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement , Mueller wrote a previously unknown private letter to the Justice Department, which revealed a degree of dissatisfaction with the public discussion of Mueller’s work that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “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.”

The letter made a key request: 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 context, nature and substance of the report ….

I’m pretty sure that covers pretty much all of it.

Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page letter to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.

In his letter, Mueller wrote that the redaction process “need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation.”

Barr is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee — a much-anticipated public confrontation between the nation’s top law enforcement official and Democratic lawmakers, where he is likely to be questioned at length about his interactions with Mueller.

A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.

In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that news coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.

When Barr pressed him whether he thought Barr’s letter was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not, but felt that the media coverage of the letter was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.

In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his letter a “summary,” saying he had never meant his letter to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of the top conclusions, officials said.

Justice Department officials said in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but they did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.

Barr said he did not want to put out pieces of the report, but rather issue it all at once with redactions, and didn’t want to change course now, according to officials.

Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.

No kidding. I guess we know now why Mueller wasn’t there the day Barr held his notorious press conference.

This is big. Mueller was the one person in the whole country who could have truly validated Trump and Barr’s interpretation of the report’s conclusions.

He didn’t.

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