Tag: William Barr

What Attorney General Barr said vs. what the Mueller report said

Before the special counsel’s report on Russia and President Trump was released to the public, Attorney General William P. Barr made several statements about what was in its 448 pages.

Barr received special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report last month and outlined its principal conclusions in a letter dated March 24. Barr then held a news conference on Thursday, shortly before releasing a redacted version of Mueller’s report.

As it turns out, in some cases, Barr’s characterizations were incomplete or misleading. The Mueller report is more damning of Trump than the attorney general indicated.

View the complete April 19 Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Barr v. Mueller: Friends pitted against each other

Despite close ties, the attorney general and special counsel face increasing scrutiny of their disagreements on the Trump probe.

Bill Barr and Robert Mueller have been close friends for 30 years, from the Justice Department to family weddings and the Bible study attended by both of their wives.

Now they’re anchoring two ends of a legal high-wire act playing out through news conferences, congressional hearings and close-up reviews of the special counsel’s long-awaited findings on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The bond between the two men has been stressed over the past month amid a volley of letters and closed-door negotiations among their aides. Finally, on Thursday, the release of Mueller’s final report showcased the large amounts of daylight between the veteran law enforcement officials on fundamental questions at the heart of Donald Trump’s presidency.’

View the complete April 18 article by Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn on the Politico website here.

Five takeaways from Mueller’s report

The release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Thursday ends a two-year investigation that has shadowed Donald Trump’s presidency but opens a new era likely to keep Mueller and his findings in the spotlight.

The White House and congressional Republicans welcomed Thursday’s report as positive news for the president, while Democrats vowed to move forward with their investigations.

Mueller ultimately did not establish that Trump or members of his campaign coordinated or conspired with Moscow to affect the 2016 presidential election, but he and his team declined to reach a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.

View the complete April 18 article by Morgan Chalfant and Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

What Attorney General Barr buried, misrepresented or ignored in clearing Trump

Attorney General William P. Barr has twice ensured that he had the first word on the conclusions drawn by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III after Mueller’s almost-two-year probe into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in that election.

In March, shortly after Mueller’s team completed its work, Barr offered the country a four-page overview of what Mueller found, one that necessarily elided a lot of detail from Mueller’s work.

On Thursday, Barr held a news conference an hour before the Justice Department released a redacted version of Mueller’s full report to make pointed comments about what the report contained. Barr repeatedly declared that Trump had been cleared of collusion, for example, words that were music to Trump’s ears.

View the complete April 18 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Here’s what Watergate experts thought of Barr’s ‘political defense’ of Trump

“He was a shill for the president,” one Watergate expert said.

Attorney General William Barr launched a strident political defense of the president Thursday shortly before releasing special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report.

“In assessing the president’s actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context. President [Donald] Trump faced an unprecedented situation,”  Barr told reporters in a press conference. “As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates.”

Barr reiterated two key points from his March 24 letter to Congress: Mueller did not conclude there was criminal collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and the evidence does not show that Trump obstructed justice.

View the complete April 18 article by Joshua Eaton on the ThinkProgress website here.

On eve of Mueller report’s release, Nadler accuses Barr of protecting Trump

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler accused Attorney General William P. Barr of trying to protect President Trump and “bake in the narrative to the benefit of the White House” by holding a news conference about the special counsel’s report hours before Nadler says the report will be made public.

In a hastily assembled news conference of his own Wednesday night on the eve of the release of the redacted findings of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, the New York Democrat said he’d been informed by the Justice Department that Congress would receive the report between 11 a.m. and noon. Barr is scheduled to speak to the press at 9:30 a.m.

“The attorney general appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump — the very subject of investigation at the heart of the Mueller report — rather than letting the facts speak for themselves,” Nadler said.

View the complete April 17 article by Colby Itkowitz and Rachael Bade on The Washington Post website here.

Mueller on obstruction: Evidence prevents ‘conclusively determining no criminal conduct occurred’

Special counsel Robert Mueller said in his long-awaited report that he was unable to “conclusively determine” during the course of his investigation that no criminal conduct occurred in regards to whether President Trumpobstructed justice.

Mueller’s investigators wrote that they were “unable” to say definitively that Trump did not commit an obstruction of justice offense because of “difficult issues” presented by the evidence collected over the course of their nearly two-year probe, as stated in a redacted version of the special counsel’s closing documentation released by the Justice Department on Thursday.

“[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment,” the report states.

View the complete April 18 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

The normal person’s guide to the Mueller report

Attorney General William P. Barr has submitted his summary of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report to Congress. Here’s what to expect next. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

On Thursday, the Justice Department is expected to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s summary of his team’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination with President Trump’s campaign.

That’s a version of a sentence that I’ve written probably 200 times in the past two years but which many Americans have likely come across far less frequently. The Mueller investigation, as it’s known in shorthand, has been the center of the political universe for months, but, because most Americans are wise enough to only visit that universe as tourists, the extent of its overlap with broader culture is certainly more limited.

With that in mind, we decided to step back and offer an overview of Thursday’s release, that covers the basic whos, whats, whens and whys. What follows is not “The Mueller Report for Idiots.” It is, instead, a framework for understanding a complex document and a complicated situation.

View the complete April 17 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

White House and Justice Dept. Officials Discussed Mueller Report Before Release Attorney General William P. Barr plans a news conference on Thursday to discuss the release of the Mueller report. Credit Erin Schaff/The New York Times Image

WASHINGTON — Not all of Robert S. Mueller III’s findings will be news to President Trump when they are released Thursday.

Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings.

A sense of paranoia was taking hold among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, some of whom fear his backlash more than the findings themselves, the people said. The report might make clear which of Mr. Trump’s current and former advisers spoke to the special counsel, how much they said and how much damage they did to the president — providing a kind of road map for retaliation.

View the complete April 17 article by Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos and Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.

Congress won’t get Mueller report until after Barr press conference

The Department of Justice (DOJ) won’t deliver the redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report to Congress until after a press conference from Attorney General William Barr, a Democratic aide told The Hill.

The aide said lawmakers on Capitol Hill would receive the report at 11 a.m. on Thursday, more than an hour after Barr is expected to begin his press conference.

The decision immediately led to complaints from Democrats and criticism from the media, which said it would allow the administration to spin news favorably for the White House before anyone sees Mueller’s full report.

View the complete April 17 article by Jacqueline Thomsen and Brandon Conradis on The Hill website here.