Team Mueller Breaks Silence To NY Times In Wednesday Night Stunner

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Donald Trump said, immediately ahead of the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Kremlin operatives as well as Trump’s alleged efforts to obstruct justice in that investigation, that he wanted the entire report released. Trump, Jr. said the same thing at CPAC when he spoke to a Republican crowd. The House of Representatives voted unanimously to have the report released.

Now, the GOP is fighting the release with everything they’ve got, and The New York Times may have uncovered the reason for that.

While Trump goes on his victory tour over a report that he says “totally exonerates” him, insiders say that the Mueller team is frustrated with Attorney General William Barr’s publicly-released summary.

The New York Times reports that:

‘Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators 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, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.’

Although the Mueller report is quoted as saying that no evidence of criminal collusion with Kremlin operatives was found, some Democrats say that the public record of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia already prove unethical and impeachable behavior. Mueller did not, however, exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. Trump’s own attorney general did.

The inaccurate and incomplete information that Mueller’s investigators believe the public has been led to believe seems most likely to be in regards to obstruction than collusion.

‘The officials and others interviewed declined to flesh out why some of the special counsel’s investigators viewed their findings as potentially more damaging for the president than Mr. Barr explained, although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation.’

Barr has insisted that he did not want to “wade into political waters” by making a negative judgment on Trump’s obstruction of justice. Perhaps that decision would have been best made by Congress.

Regardless of who wants to wade anywhere, the summary as it stands is insufficient. The American people do have the right to know if their president or any presidential candidates for 2020 have committed a crime.

‘Mr. Barr has come under criticism for sharing so little. But according to officials familiar with the attorney general’s thinking, he and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into political territory. Mr. Barr and his advisers expressed concern that if they included derogatory information about Mr. Trump while clearing him, they would face a storm of criticism like what Mr. Comey endured in the Clinton investigation.’

Mr. Barr’s promises of transparency have done little to appease Democrats who control the House. The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to let its chairman use a subpoena to try to compel Mr. Barr to hand over a full copy of the Mueller report and its underlying evidence to Congress. The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has not said when he will use the subpoena, but made clear on Wednesday that he did not trust Mr. Barr’s characterization of what Mr. Mueller’s team found.

Featured image via Flickr by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license