Media says Mueller objected to Barr’s four page memo on Russia report, but Mueller admits his problem was with the media, not Barr’s memo!

If you are watching CNN or MSNBC, you’ll know then they are going crazy right now with this news that Mueller wanted Barr to release more initially on his report.

Here’s what the Wapo report says:

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.

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.

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.”

After the letter, Mueller called Barr to discuss this further.

Note the portion that I bolded below:

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.

Two points.

First, Barr’s four page memo was never supposed to “fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report. He made clear that this was just a preliminary report – not a summary – and that he would fully release the actual report soon thereafter.

Secondly, Mueller told Barr that his initial report was ACCURATE, that his concerns were with the media creating confusion over it.

From the explanations above, it sounds like Barr has been very consistent with how he wanted to release the report, and he clearly didn’t want to change his plans just because Mueller had a bee in his bonnet.

Also, Barr told Mueller the same thing he told everyone else, that his four page memo was not a summary, but rather a presentation of the top line facts. See, consistent.

But don’t tell that to Julian Castro, who is now calling for Barr to resign for misleading the American people or something:

How did he mislead anyone? Mueller said Barr’s report was accurate, and Barr has since released the entire report for all to see. It proves his memo was accurate, just as Mueller agreed.

Ugh. Castro is just an idiot Democrat trying to raise the profile of his 2020 presidential campaign. With nonsense apparently.


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