WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee should not have had to vote Wednesday to subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. It should already have been sent to Congress. The fact that the body’s Democrats had to take this forcing action underscores why Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the document so far is irresponsible – and, yes, suspicious.
Let’s look at the timeline. Mueller submitted his report March 22. Two days later, on March 24, Barr issued his four-page letter that included not one complete sentence from the report. Barr quoted the report as saying: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Note that the quote leaves out the beginning of the original sentence.
And note also that Barr’s own words said Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia.” The phase “did not establish” is not the same as “did not find,” but we have no way of knowing, absent the report itself, how significant that difference is. What we do know is that Barr seems to have put the best possible spin for Trump on what Mueller himself wrote.
Indeed, The New York Times reported Wednesday evening that there is dissatisfaction on the Mueller team with Barr’s account.
“Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators,” the paper reported, “have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated.”