For those not up on game, shortly after Special counsel Robert Mueller released the findings of his two-year investigation into whether Russia colluded with the Trump administration to steal the 2016 presidential election, Attorney General William Barr condensed this 448-page report down to a four-page memo given to Congress in which Barr claimed that the president didn’t commit obstruction of justice.
What’s odd about this is that Mueller’s report didn’t conclude whether or not the president committed obstruction of justice. But for some reason, Barr, aka Fred Flintstone Face, aka Evil John Goodman Face, decided he would conclude that the president didn’t commit obstruction of justice even though no one asked him to. The president took a Twitter victory lap, claiming that he’d been exonerated and that all of it—the investigation, all the indictments, all the claims—were a part of a larger witch hunt by Democrats to throw him out of office, and that it didn’t work.
Now, The Washington Post has uncovered a letter sent from Mueller to Barr in late March that basically stated—and I’m paraphrasing here—“Bitch, you played my 448-page investigation into a four-page memo that gutted all the feeling I put into it!”
Not only did Mueller send a letter, but the two men—one of whom has a side job at Slate Rock and Gravel Company—hopped on the phone to try and hash it out. While The Root was unable to get a transcript of the actual phone call, I have been writing about this shit long enough to be able to channel Mueller’s voice, which I will do here: “Bitch, you played me. Are you working for that Bama? I should’ve know that you weren’t to be trusted. It was 448-pages; ain’t no way in hell you read it that fast. Oh, you’re a speed reader now? I should kick your...hello?”
Fine, here’s what Mueller’s letter to the Justice Department actually said, according to The Post:
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, according to The Washington Post. “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 Post notes that the letter also requested that Mueller’s long-ass homework project be released in full and noted a few places that could be redacted.
Justice Department officials told The Post that they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter (told y’all he was pissed) and added that they were surprised that he had these concerns. Barr told Congress that Mueller didn’t want to review his four-page letter because it was fucking four-pages of “come watch Trump throw a football over a mountain.”
From The Post:
A day after Mueller sent his letter to Barr, the two men spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials. In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.
Mueller did not express similar concerns about the public discussion of the investigation of Russia’s election interference, the officials said. Barr has testified previously he did not know whether Mueller supported his conclusion on obstruction.
When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.
In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his memo a “summary,” saying he had never intended to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of its top conclusions, officials said.
Justice Department officials told The Post that the conversation was more cordial than the letter, but the two men couldn’t agree on how to move forward. Barr wanted to release the full report with redactions and didn’t see the reasoning for releasing portions of the report as Mueller reportedly suggested.
According to claims, Mueller was more concerned with the public’s interpretation of Barr’s four-page summary and not the full report.
“After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman told The Post Tuesday evening. “In a cordial and professional conversation, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. They then discussed whether additional context from the report would be helpful and could be quickly released.”
“However, the Attorney General ultimately determined that it would not be productive to release the report in piecemeal fashion,” the spokeswoman said. “The Attorney General and the Special Counsel agreed to get the full report out with necessary redactions as expeditiously as possible. The next day, the Attorney General sent a letter to Congress reiterating that his March 24 letter was not intended to be a summary of the report, but instead only stated the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions, and volunteered to testify before both Senate and House Judiciary Committees on May 1 and 2.”
Mueller punted. That’s the takeaway here. Mueller could’ve concluded that that the president did or didn’t commit obstruction of justice. The report he created described at least 10 significant episodes of possible obstruction of justice. But Mueller, who we already know knows how to work a phone because he surely called Barr to complain about his four-page summation, couldn’t call someone to ask if he had to adhere to a long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted and for that reason, here we are. Mueller punted and Fred Flintstone Face ran it back for a touchdown.
DISCUSSION
I’ll give Mueller the benefit of the doubt because he’s been pretty busy over the last two years, but really? What was he expecting out of this administration? If he read his own report he should have been able to predict how this played out.