On April 10, over a week before the Mueller report was finally made public, Attorney General William Barr testified under oath before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. During his testimony, Barr was asked whether or not Special Counsel Robert Mueller supported his conclusion, as articulated in the Attorney General’s now infamous 4-page memo, that Donald Trump was not guilty of any crimes. Barr responded that he “didn’t know” what Mueller thought of his conclusion.
Flashback: April 10.
VAN HOLLEN: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?
BARR: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion. pic.twitter.com/vmwkmw3bcj
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 1, 2019
Well, today it became clear that Barr was lying under oath. According to reporting in the Washington Post, Mueller had written to Barr on March 27, three days after the Attorney General had issued his own highly-contested 4-page summary of the report, demanding that the non-classified summaries contained in the actual report itself be released. This, Mueller argued, was imperative, as the Attorney General’s 4-page overview, “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report. In the letter, which the Post apparently has a copy of, Mueller went on to say, “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.”
So, when Barr testified on April 10, telling members of the Senate that he was not aware what Mueller thought of his 4-page summary, that was a bald-faced lie. Barr knew that Mueller thought that his “summary” had misstated the findings of the report, and that the Special Counsel wanted the actual non-classified sections of the report released. But it would appear as though Barr lied in hopes of keeping the actual report out of the hands of Congress for as long as possible, giving Donald Trump and his associates more time to advance their false “no collusion, no obstruction” narrative.
And now House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler is demanding answers. In a statement issued this evening, Nadler said, “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.“
And the facts have indeed caught up to him. It is clearly evident that the Attorney General held back on the Special Counsel’s report for political reasons, giving Donald Trump several weeks to put his own spin on the inaccurate 4-page memo, and then lied to Congress under oath when asked if he knew the Special Counsel’s opinion of his approach.
Oh, and it’s also being reported today that Robert Mueller is willing to testify before Congress, but that Barr’s Department of Justice is stopping him from doing so.
Barr must be impeached.
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House Oversight member Representative Ro Khanna on The Last Word this evening- “Bill Barr needs to resign.”
Don’t just impeach. Indict.
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.
Reminder that Barr is the person who decides on who and what gets charged in all the other Federal investigations into Trump’s business and the inauguration
Now it is confirmed Mueller objected to the “context, nature, and substance” of Barr’s misleading summary of the report.
And the false public narrative it allowed the White House to create.
No one can place any reliance on what Barr says. We need to hear from Mueller himself.
I like the word ‘institutionalist’ which is being used a lot re Mueller and just means someone who follows the rules and values the systems of our democracy. I’m going to be using it a lot. My biggest beef with radicalism is its inability to value the systems that allow it to exist in the first place. If these Trumpian years bring greater awareness to the value of some institutions and especially their ethical codes that would be good.
There a good bureaucrats and bad ones. Muelller good. Barr criminal stooge.
But Jean, clearly the institution isn’t working for anyone except the ultra rich. Mueller clearly followed the rule of law too exactly and even he appears to be freaking out to some degree about the outcome. Maybe it’s time exact some Game of Thrones (which I’ve never seen) type democracy and drag the king and his family onto the lawn for a good old fashioned beheading?
Watch live: Barr to speak before Senate panel amid calls for his resignation after news of Mueller’s letter. Follow our analysis.
Attorney General William P. Barr’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee is his first on Capitol Hill since he released a redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Washington Post reported that Mueller complained to the attorney general in a letter that Barr’s four-page memo to Congress in March “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the special counsel’s findings about possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.
The Mueller letter to Barr:
https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1123584455799713794
Whoa. According to this letter, Mueller also reached out on the 24th to express his concern about Barr’s misrepresentation of the report. This was his SECOND complaint.
Aloha, Happy International Workers Day. Our Corporate masters are letting us know who is an acceptable candidate and who is not.
https://gritpost.com/recent-poll-biden-confuses-distorts-support-bernie/
Lindsay Graham’s relitigating Hillary’s email server and Peter Strzok texts are all he has. I’m glad that Feinsten didn’t take the bait. Distract, Deflect, Rinse, Repeat.
Graham ended his feeble address by sort of trailing off and looks down with a look of defeat. He couldn’t even pretend. He will drown his sorrow and shame tonight with too much scotch and male interns, flogging him with Milky Way candy bars. Full-sized.
Waah waah waah
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/01/william-barr-calls-mueller-letter-on-summary-a-bit-snitty-sot-vpx.cnn
“The letter is a bit snitty and I think it was probably written by one of his staff people.”
Ahahahaha! Oh, this shit is so good. Smart enough to recognize you are standing on the verge of getting the universal ass beating of all time? No, you are not.
I remember the birth canal
It will be interesting when Graham starts attacking Mayor Pete.
Does Lindsay Graham remember what life was like in the womb?
Bob— the system works for the top 20% actually. It works very well for them. The 1% thing was handy because it seemed to other the problem completely. I mean no one thought they were in the 1%. I heard many ppl in the 1% say they weren’t.
If in fact the system only benefited the 1%, then we would have the conditions for revolution. As it stands, we need to fix the system not destroy it. People who argue for an end to policing etc are idiots. They have no sense of history or even contemporary examples of lawless states. I know such speech is mostly rhetorical but I don’t think it’s all that useful.
I’m all for radically re-working the financial system and untying it from our democratic systems as much as possible. But democratic systems are not the same as the financial system. When Bernie and Trump attack the main stream press, the voting system and the political system, they are damaging our democracy. For power.
The reality is that bureaucrats and the press and living room activists, not radicals, have been the best restraint on Trump. If radicals could sckoeledgr the value of people working within the system or against their own financial self-interest to push progressive change rather than attacking those people instead of the real enemy , I’d have a lot more respect for them.
PS the history of revolution is generally not improved circumstances for most people. That ours resulted in a democracy that (overall) steadily progresses in terms of social justice was dumb luck. And to ignore the institutions that preserve our freedoms, such as they are, because the economy is very predictably fucked, is moronic at best. Most revolutions turn to oligarchies and plutocracies or worse with the accompanying wealth inequality a hell of a lot faster.
The truth is that wealth inequality is norm. It isn’t only the result of capitalism. We love to blame capitalism for human problems.
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