Tag: Mueller Report

White House complained about Mueller report to Barr

White House lawyer Emmet Flood sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr in April complaining that special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report made “political” statements, according to multiple reports.

The letter was sent one day after Mueller’s redacted report was released to the public.

In it, Flood described the Mueller report as suffering from “an extraordinary legal defect” and rebuked the special counsel for explicitly stating that his investigation did not “exonerate” President Trump on allegations of obstruction of justice.

View the complete May 2 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Fox News Judge Napolitano: Barr Misled Congress On Mueller Concerns

Fox News judicial analyst Judge Napolitano on Wednesday accused Attorney General Bill Barr of misleading the House of Representatives when he claimed to be unaware of special counsel Robert Mueller’s concerns with his four-page summary of the Russia investigation — after having received a letter from Mueller explicitly stating those concerns.

Barr was asked about his testimony before the House on Wednesday by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who demanded to know why the attorney general said he was unaware of concerns from special counsel Mueller’s team despite having spoken with Mueller about his concerns.

“I answered a question,” Barr told Leahy. “And the question was related to unidentified members who were expressing frustration over the accuracy relating to findings. I don’t know what that refers to at all. I talked directly to Bob Mueller, not members of his team.”

View the complete May 1 article by Elizabeth Preza on the National Memo website here.

Amy Klobuchar prosecutes Bill Barr with dozens of pieces of evidence from the Mueller report Brendan Skwire

Minnesota Democratic senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar essentially prosecuted Attorney General Bill Barr at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, using evidence from the Mueller report to score point after point at Barr’s expense.

“I asked you if a president or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction of justice, and you said yes,” Klobuchar began. “The report found that Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House, before it, that the president repeatedly implied that Cohen’s family members had committed crimes. Do you consider that evidence to be an attempt to have a witness change its testimony?”

“No. I don’t think that that could pass muster. Those public statements he was making, could pass muster as subornation of perjury,” Barr began, but Klobuchar cut him off

View the complete May 1 article by Brendan Skwire on the Raw Story website here.

Dems hammer Barr over Mueller in four-hour grilling

Senate Democrats were fully unleashed in their grilling of Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday, accusing the top Department of Justice official of bungling the release of the Mueller report in an attempt to defend President Trump.

During the four-hour hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats seized on the explosive revelation that special counsel Robert Mueller had criticized Barr’s summary of his report in writing. Some suggested he was no longer fit to serve as attorney general.

“I think history will judge you harshly, and maybe a bit unfairly,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Barr.

View the complete May 1 article by Jacqueline Thomsen and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Barr defends handling of Mueller report

Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report at a tense Senate hearing, explaining in detail his contacts with Mueller, who had objected to his description of the report’s findings on obstruction.

In sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr said he wanted to release the report’s bottom-line conclusions as quickly as possible because the public was in a “high state of agitation” over the results of Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and potential coordination between President Trump’s campaign and Moscow.

“Former government officials were confidently predicting that the president or members of his family would be indicted,” Barr told senators in his opening remarks.

View the complete May 1 article by Morgan Chalfant and Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

Mueller expressed ‘frustration’ to Barr over lack of context in letter

A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller expressed “frustration” to Attorney General William Barr in late March over the lack of context in the attorney general’s four-page memo describing his investigation’s findings.

Mueller “expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage” of his obstruction inquiry in a phone call following the release of Barr’s four-page letter, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement to The Hill.

Kupec said Barr called Mueller after receiving a letter in which, according to The Washington Post, the special counsel wrote that Barr’s March 24 memo did not “capture the context, nature, and substance” of his findings.

View the complete April 30 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump sees low risk from Mueller attacks

President Trump is ramping up attacks on Democrats over special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, a strategy designed to stir up his base that the White House sees little political risk in pursuing.

Trump views the attacks as a way to go on offense ahead of his 2020 reelection race and to portray Democrats as focused more on impeaching and tearing him down than on the nation’s best interests.

In the roughly 10 days since the redacted report was published, Trump has taken repeated jabs at the special counsel and his team on Twitter, while stonewalling Democrats seeking to delve further into Mueller’s findings.

View the complete April 30 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

GOP sets up firewall for Trump on Mueller

Senate Republicans are beginning to set up a firewall for President Trumpagainst special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, pushing back at a slew of Democratic attacks on the president’s conduct as described in the document.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Monday set the tone for his caucus’s rank and file, signaling the GOP will join the White House in casting Democratic attacks emanating from the Mueller report as being all about the 2020 campaign.

“If this were legitimate oversight, that would be one thing, but I think this is more like harassment and it’s all politics,” said Cornyn, formerly the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. “Obviously Democrats were very disappointed in the Mueller report and they’re not willing to accept the conclusions and move on.”

View the complete April 30 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Poll: Even Many Trump Supporters Don’t Buy His Mueller Report Spin

In conjunction with Attorney General Bill Barr, President Donald Trump has aggressively tried to spin Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report as an “exoneration” of the president — even though it is nothing of the sort.

But a new poll shows that most people aren’t buying it.

Commissioned by the Washington Post and ABC News, the poll found that Trump’s spin about the report hasn’t even convinced the 39 percent of people who approve

View the complete April 26 article by Cody Fenwick with AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Trump says he did not try to fire Mueller. Here’s what Mueller’s report says.

“As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself.”

— President Trump, in a tweet, April 25, 2019

President Trump is disputing a key finding of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report — that he ordered the firing of Robert Mueller.

In this tweet, he somehow tries to blame the media for accurately reporting on what the report said. Perhaps he is trying to avoid saying that a report he has claimed exonerated him was incorrect.

Trump also makes the curious claim that he could have fired Mueller himself. That’s not correct.

Four Pinocchios

View the complete April 26 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.