The Commentariat -- May 3, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Friday sent his latest offer [to] Attorney General William Barr to try to reach an agreement in his effort to obtain the unredacted special counsel report and the underlying evidence before Nadler moves forward with holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress. Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in the special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Nadler wrote that he was 'willing to prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production.' But Nadler's letter does not budge on Democrats' insistence that the Justice Department allow Congress to view grand jury material that's redacted in the report, which Barr has argued he's not allowed by law to provide. Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply."

Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the Mueller report, Venezuela and North Korea during a lengthy phone call on Friday, the White House said. The two talked on the phone for more than an hour, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The leaders also discussed trade and a potential nuclear agreement including China, Sanders said. Regarding the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which concluded in March, Sanders said 'both leaders knew there was no collusion.' The discussion on the matter was brief, she said."

We Saw This Coming. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "The White House on Friday seized on revelations that the FBI during the 2016 campaign sent an undercover investigator to meet with an aide to then-candidate Donald Trump, with the president calling the news 'bigger than Watergate.' Trump praised one of his most frequent media foes, The New York Times, for its reporting, while his reelection campaign lit into investigators and Vice President Mike Pence called the bureau's actions' very troubling.'"

Matt Dixon of Politico: "In an early show of force, more than a third of Florida's Democratic state legislators endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid for president. The endorsements, from 23 of the Legislature's 64 Democrats, were gathered over the past month by state Rep. Joseph Geller, a Broward County Democrat and longtime Biden supporter. Geller said Biden has the best shot at bridging a growing divide between progressive Democrats and those representing the party's more moderate, traditional wing."

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The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "... Robert Mueller's team is in direct talks with the House Judiciary Committee about whether he will testify before Congress, according to multiple reports. NBC News and ABC News reported that the committee is now speaking with Mueller's team when it was previously dealing with the Justice Department. NBC reports that a hearing has not been finalized and a date was not set."

Rebecca Morin of USA Today: "President Trump said Thursday that he won't allow former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify before Congress. 'I don't think I can let him and then tell everybody else you can because especially him because he was the counsel,' Trump said during a clip of a 20-minute interview aired on Fox News. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, last week issued a subpoena to McGahn to testify before the committee.... Trump maintained that there is no need to investigate further now after Mueller's report. 'I would say it's done,' the president said Thursday in the Fox News sit-down. 'Nobody has ever done what I've done, I've given total transparency. It's never happened before like this.'" Mrs. McC: Right.

Pamela Brown & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The White House has accused special counsel Robert Mueller's team of playing politics with the investigation and wildly straying from their mission in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr last month and released Thursday afternoon. In the five-page letter, a top White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, raised several concerns with the substance and format of Mueller's report, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russians but did unearth substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump, but without saying if the President should be prosecuted. Flood slammed Mueller's approach to the obstruction investigation. Even though current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be charged, Flood wrote that Mueller needed to 'either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case.... The (special counsel) instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity -- part "truth commission" report and part law school exam paper,' Flood wrote.... The letter is dated April 19, one day after the Justice Department released the redacted report to the public." The same day, Trump published one of his "No Collusion - No Obstruction!" tweets. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ed Krassenstein of the Hill Reporter: "Senator and 2020 presidential candidate, Amy Klobuchar, has just sent a letter to Robert Mueller requesting information related to Trump's personal tax returns and Trump Organization financial details. The letter ... outlines the fact that Attorney General William Barr suggested that she ask Mueller directly about Trump's tax returns, after Barr himself said on Wednesday that he did not know if Mueller had obtained or reviewed any of Trump's returns. Klobuchar makes it clear that since Senator Lindsey Graham has no plans on interviewing Mueller, that Mueller should provide her with any tax returns or Trump Organization financial records that he was able to obtain." Mrs. McC: Whoever drafted Klobuchar's letter must have been smiling as she worked. ...

     ... Krassenstein has a copy of the text Klobuchar's letter at the end of his report, but as of Thursday night, it contains writeovers. Klobuchar has a readable copy on her own Senate site.

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "House Democrats, decrying what they called an erosion of American democracy, threatened on Thursday to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee and ignored a subpoena deadline to hand over Robert S. Mueller III's full report and evidence.... 'What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,' Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, referring to a House hearing in which he said he was unaware that the special counsel had protested his portrayal of his conclusions. 'That's a crime.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mikhaila Fogel & Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare explain why Barr's misleading answer to Rep. Charlie Crist in an April hearing do not constitute perjury. However, the authors do note a super-slip-up Barr made in his self-defensive testimony before the Senate this week: "Barr's response suggests his defense: He understood Crist to be asking if he knew anything about concerns raised by members of Mueller's team, not by Mueller himself. And Barr had only heard directly from Mueller. The attorney general's comment later in the May 1 hearing that he thought the Mueller letter 'was probably written by one of his staff people' complicates the explanation he provided...."

President* Free to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue. Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: "Stunning among other stunning statements Attorney General William Barr made Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee was his blithe declaration that the president is above the law. Responding to questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Barr claimed repeatedly Donald Trump had been 'falsely accused' of coordinating with Russia. Deploying the 'no underlying crime' red herring, Barr asserted that the president as head of government and the Department of Justice was entitled to close down an investigation into himself if he felt it was off the rails: 'The president does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow [an investigation] to run its course,' Barr said. 'That's important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here ... do involve the exercise of the president's constitutional authority, and we now know that he was being falsely accused.'... Bill Barr declared Trump king." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "Whether out of sycophantic loyalty or a deep-seated belief in executive impunity, Barr has used his position to insulate the president from legal scrutiny. He has done everything in his power to downplay the impact of the special counsel's investigation.... You don't have to dive deep into Barr's history to see that he is an apparatchik, less committed to the rule of law than he is to his political party and its leadership.... Helping Republican presidents act with impunity is William Barr's stock-in-trade.... His theory of presidential immunity did not extend to Bill Clinton, for example, whose impeachment Barr defended."

Right-wing columnist Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner: "Attorney General William Barr three times now has tread on the dangerous ground of asserting that the president can assess his own guilt or innocence and, by extension, of the culpability of underlings as well.... Barr's prepared [April 18] press conference remarks ascribed 'non-corrupt motives' to President Trump's consideration of impeding Mueller's probe, on the theory that Trump 'was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,' even though 'there was in fact no collusion.'... In his May 1 testimony, Barr was more specific on two separate occasions. 'If the president is being falsely accused..., and he felt this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for [exercising constitutional authority] for replacing an independent counsel.' In later testimony, Barr said: 'With the president, who has a constitutional authority to supervise proceedings ... was based on false allegations, the president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course. The president could terminate that proceeding and it would not be corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused, and he would be worried about the impact on his administration.'... There can be no innocent motive for, or innocent effect from, an attempt to halt a duly constituted investigation operating under proper constitutional safeguards. This is so even if a president's political opponents are misusing ... the investigation for their own illegitimate purposes."

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare in the Atlantic, Is So Disillusioned: "Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject.... Barr has consistently sought to spin his department's work in a highly political fashion, and he has done so to cast the president's conduct in the most favorable possible light.... Barr's public statements [about the Mueller report] are simply indefensible." Wittes goes on to catalogue all the ways Barr has misrepresented Mueller's findings. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker points out what a low opinion Bill Barr holds of federal "staff." He doesn't think much of low-life U.S. senators, either. Nor the press, who apparently were at fault in reading & reporting his summary that's not a summary as a near-vindication of Trump....

     ... Mrs. McC: Oddly enough, Barr didn't fault Trump for the victory lap he took after some lowly staffer read parts of Barr's not-summary to him. And he didn't fault himself for testifying that the Mueller report found that Trump was "falsely accused." But Barr is a shady lawyer & therefore not a person who is troubled by logical fallacies. I should add here that "staff" are not ditzy recent high-school grads who got jobs in the typing pool because they couldn't get real, private-sector jobs. For instance, the House "staff" whom Barr is too high-and-mighty to allow to question him would be experienced lawyers; the DOJ "staff" who memorialized the Barr-Mueller phone call also would likely be top department lawyers. Very often, "staff" are far more competent than the elected & appointed officials for whom they work. They have years of specialized experience. Effective officials know their staffs are indispensable & appreciate their expertise.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Trump is a uniquely diseased man, it's true. But what kind of political party nominates, celebrates, venerates, and takes political bullets for a uniquely diseased man? So after today, if we didn't before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It's 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction. This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways we've never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he's the victim of a 'coup.' What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eager help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them." (Also linked yesterday.)

Adam Goldman, et al., of the New York Times: A U.S. government investigator posing as a research assistant set up a meeting in a London bar in September 2016 with George Papadopoulos. "The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign's links to Russia.... Ms. Turk ... work[ed] alongside a longtime informant, the Cambridge professor Stefan A. Halper.... The American government's affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances.... The decision to use Ms. Turk ... shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the second New York Times "original reporting" story in two days that is helpful to Donald Trump. The first -- about Joe's Biden's son Hunter's business ops in Ukraine & linked yesterday -- was clearly a Rudy Giuliani plant; the report more-or-less said so. And, surprise, surprise, Bill Barr makes more than a cameo appearance in both matters. P.S. As you may recall, the NYT was the prime mover of the Clinton e-mails! story, and we should expect the Times again to be the paper of record exaggeration on stories "exposing" purported wrongdoing by whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Barr Has Protected Trump. His Next Step Is to Smear His Opponents.... One direction the loyal AG is obviously heading is yet another investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. At Barr's hearing, Republican senators devoted most of their time to repeating wild allegations about the Russia investigation as deep state coup.... A second direction for Barr's investigatory powers is now coming into view. As Hillary Clinton's value as a foil has receded, Trump has taken aim at the candidate he sees as his most likely and formidable threat: Joe Biden. The ... Times story describes both the connections between Biden and Ukraine, and Trumpworld’s efforts to criminalize them.... Hunter Biden has legally but somewhat sleazily traded on his father's name through various investment and consulting arrangements.... The far greater evidence of misconduct lies in the ... Trump administration['s] ... pressuring Ukraine to advance the case specifically in order to smear Biden.... The context for this revelation is another story the Times broke last year that ... revealed that Ukraine had ceased all cooperation with the Mueller probe [in its investigation of Paul Manafort].... Having first helped Trump by shutting down its probe of Manafort, now Ukraine is helping him find some mud on a likely opponent."

Greg Farrell of Bloomberg News: "... at least one group has peered into the carefully guarded trove [of Donald Trump's tax returns] ... -- a team from Deutsche Bank AG. The bankers got a look before agreeing to lend to the Trump Organization in 2012 -- access that was described by two people familiar with the interaction. It was all part of a fresh start on a banking relationship that had soured after the financial crisis, descending into litigation over a Chicago project.... Deutsche Bank sent a team to the office of Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, the two people said. Weisselberg allowed the bankers to see relevant parts of Trump's tax returns and take notes, the people said. They weren't allowed to make copies of the documents, they said."

Julia Harte of Reuters: "The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York's Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause.... Such transactions must pass muster with federal lawmakers, some legal experts say.... Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been 'stonewalled' in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump's businesses. 'This new information raises serious questions about the President and his businesses' potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,' Cummings said in a statement to Reuters." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mark Stern of Slate: "On Wednesday afternoon, after Attorney General William Barr finished his truculent and mendacious testimony before the Senate, the Department of Justice filed perhaps the most embarrassing, illogical, and nakedly political brief in the history of the agency. With Barr's assent, the DOJ argued that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because Congress zeroed out the individual mandate's penalty in 2017. The timing couldn't be worse. After obliterating his own credibility at the Senate hearing, Barr scorched the Justice Department's legitimacy, deploying fatuous pseudo-legal arguments to further the Trump administration's partisan goals." Stern explains some of the DOJ's "zany" arguments. The DOJ's brief is here.

They Really Don't Care, Do They? Jacob Soboroff of NBC News: "On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a 'central database,' an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. '[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,' a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. 'We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.'... The gaps in the system for tracking separations would result in a months-long effort to reunite nearly 3,000 families separated under the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy. Officials had to review all the relevant records manually, a process that continues." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

A Very Sudden Decision to Withdraw. Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump said Thursday that conservative commentator Stephen Moore has decided to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board amid staunch opposition from Senate Republicans. 'Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,' Trump tweeted.... The announcement came just hours after Moore said the White House was still 'all in' on his potential nomination." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trump Administration Is Whitewashing White Supremacy. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "A group of Democratic senators ... on Thursday called for the FBI to rescind a recent change to the way it classifies domestic terrorist incidents, arguing that the move plays down the threat of white supremacy. The letter to Attorney General William P. Barr and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was signed by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), all 2020 [presidential] candidates, as well as Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). All are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, the senators said the FBI has created a new category -- 'racially-motivated violent extremism' -- that 'inappropriately' combines white-supremacist incidents with those involving 'Black identity extremists.' By doing so, the FBI has 'shifted its approach to tracking domestic terrorism incidents to obfuscate the white supremacist threat,' the senators said.... The senators said the Justice Department and FBI revealed the change in a briefing last week with Judiciary Committee staffers that took place 'nearly six months after the briefing was requested.'"

Presidential Race 2020

Adam Beam of the AP: "The state Senate voted 27-10 on Thursday to require anyone appearing on the state's presidential primary ballot to publicly release five years' worth of income tax returns. The proposal is in response to Trump, who bucked 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns prior to his election in 2016.... The Legislature passed a nearly identical bill in 2017, only to have it vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, telling lawmakers he was concerned the law was unconstitutional. Brown, a Democrat, refused to release his tax returns while in office.... [Now-Gov.] Gavin Newsom, who has released his tax returns and embraced his role as a national 'resistance' leader to Trump and his policies. Newsom's office didn't say whether he'd sign it.... All 10 Republicans in the state Senate voted against the bill, arguing it is unconstitutional."

Paul Krugman: "The trouble with both Biden and Sanders is that each, in his own way, seems to believe that he has unique powers of persuasion that will let him defy the harsh reality of today's tribal politics. And this lack of realism could set either of them up for failure.... The big concern about a Biden presidency is that he would repeat all of Obama's early mistakes, squandering any momentum from electoral victory in pursuit of a bipartisan dream that should have died long ago. Sanders, by contrast, doesn't do bipartisanship.... Biden appears stuck in the past, when real bipartisanship sometimes happened. Sanders appears to live in an imaginary future, where a popular tidal wave washes away all political obstacles."

Mike Isaac & Kevin Roose of the New York Times: "After years of wavering about how to handle the extreme voices populating its platform, Facebook on Thursday evicted seven of its most controversial users -- many of whom are conservatives -- immediately inflaming the debate about the power and accountability of large technology companies. The social network said it had barred Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, from its platform, along with a handful of other extremists. Louis Farrakhan, the outspoken black nationalist minister who has frequently been criticized for his anti-Semitic remarks, was also banned. The Silicon Valley company said these users were disallowed from using Facebook and Instagram under its policies against 'dangerous individuals and organizations.'"

Gabrielle Emanuel & Katie Thomas of the New York Times: "A federal jury on Thursday found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold a fentanyl-based painkiller, guilty of racketeering charges in a rare criminal prosecution that blamed corporate officials for contributing to the nation's opioid epidemic. The jury, after deliberating for 15 days, issued guilty verdicts against the company's founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to fuel sales of its highly potent drug, Subsys, by not only bribing doctors to prescribe their product but also by misleading insurers about patients' need for the drug."

Beyond the Beltway

Maryland. Paul Schwarzman & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: Baltimore "Mayor Catherine E. Pugh, who is under state and federal investigation over lucrative sales of her self-published children's books, resigned Thursday, plunging thia already rattled city into another political crisis. Pugh (D), a former state lawmaker, has been under public scrutiny since at least March, following news reports about the book deals with companies that do business with the city and state. Her attorney, Steven D. Silverman, announced her resignation at his downtown law office..., reading a statement from Pugh, who was believed to be at her home elsewhere in the city." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

West Virginia. Roni Rabin of the New York Times: "The state of West Virginia on Wednesday settled a lawsuit against the nation's largest drug distributor, which had been accused of shipping nearly 100 million doses of addictive opioids to residents over a six-year period. The state's suit accused McKesson Corporation of putting profits ahead of residents' welfare by failing to investigate, report or stop suspicious drug orders as required by law, and fueling a widespread drug epidemic. McKesson, the sixth-largest American company in terms of revenue, reported over $208 billion in the last fiscal year. The giant distributor funneled enough hydrocodone and oxycodone to supply every legitimate patient with nearly 3,000 doses, state officials said."

Way Beyond

Russian Spy Whale Defects to Norway. Rick Noack of the Washington Post: "An alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave a Norwegian port city, in what appears to be a high-profile defection after a week of global attention on the unnamed beluga. Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries official Jorgen Ree Wiig told The Washington Post that the beluga 'was the first thing I saw outside of the window' of his patrolling ship in the morning. Speaking from the city of Hammerfest, he said the whale had moved only about 25 nautical miles within the last week and appeared to enjoy the proximity to humans, which he noted was 'strange' for a beluga. Contrary to the species' normal behavior, the beluga had allowed residents to pet its nose over the last few days."

News Lede

CNBC: "The U.S. jobs machine kept humming along in April, adding a robust 263,000 new hires while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest in a generation, according to a Labor Department report Friday. Nonfarm payroll growth easily beat Wall Street expectations of 190,000 and a 3.8% jobless rate."

Comments

[Cregr]

I may be wrong, but I believe memoralized records are public records. Barr said that notes were taken on his phone conversation with Mueller concerning Mueller's objections to the way he had characterized the Russian interference report. I think Congress should demand a copy of those notes rather than merely rely on Barr's testimony about the conversation. In that it was a standard practice, I imagine Mueller also made notes recording his memory of the conversation. They should be requested as well. The comparison might be quite revealing.

[Marie Burns]

@Cregr: I'm sure you're right. The federal government owns the memos. They're work product. The memos have an obvious probative value in which the Congress has an unquestionable interest; they would help confirm or refute the veracity of the witness's sworn testimony. However, as this CNN report explains, it would be difficult for Blumenthal to wrest the notes out of Barr's sweaty, fat hands. He can put up a lot of resistance.

I thought Barr's response to Blumenthal's request was jarring. It came immediately after Barr described Mueller's March 27 letter as "a bit snitty" & dismissed the letter as something a staffer, not Mueller, probably had written (not that aides don't draft most of their bosses' letters, BTW).

So, speaking of snitty, Barr -- who earlier had so much trouble directly answering straightforward questions that he had to ruminate over the meaning of "suggest" -- quickly gave a one-word answer to Blumenthal's request for the memos: "No." When Blumenthal asked, "Why not?" Barr waved him away like a fly & responded, "Why should you have them?" Translation: Fuck off. More than a bit snitty.

[PD Pepe]

Here is Amna Nawaz of PBS News in an exchange between former Justice Dept. offical David Rivkin and Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general. Rivkin believes Congress is over-stepping its authority right now; listen to how he protects Barr and in doing so protects Trump. Katyal vehemently disagrees. This is the kind of exchange that has legs. (video and transcript)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/on-mueller-report-has-attorney-general-barr-been-forthcoming-or-lawless

What is interesting to me is that for the first decade of Rivkin's life he lived in the small village of Psov in the then Soviet Union. He once wrote about the horrors of his grandparents living under Stalin and likewise his own experience in Psov:

"I grew up in the Soviet Union where the individual's interest were always subordinated to the whims of the State..."

How quickly we forget what that is like.

[unwashed]

It would appear that I'm more qualified to discuss the Mueller report than either Barr or Graham. I say this because I read the entire report front to back (or top to bottom?) while they admitted to not having done so. All 448 pages, whether they contained text, were left intentionally blank, or made intentionally black. Including all 2375 footnotes, the appendices and the Sgt. Schultz answers ("I know nothink!") provided by Drumpf in response to Mueller's questions. As a legal layman I approached it as I do an Umberto Eco novel - it'll be a slog but it should be worth it at the end. I wasn't disappointed.

Regarding the Barr comment about the Mueller letter it appears to me to be just another attempt to muddy the waters. Barr said that the letter was "...a bit snitty and probably written by an underling...".

I've read the letter as well. It doesn't sound snitty to me at all. I also concur that had Barr released the Introduction and Executive Summaries as Mueller wanted, the public response would have been much different. His 4-page statement and press conference before release of the full report was a deliberate attempt to blow smoke and implement damage control.

One thing stuck out at me from it's absence in Mueller's letter. Barr mentioned the underling thing writing the letter. If this was the case wouldn't there be reference initials for the signatory and the preparer found below the signature block along the left-hand margin? Some thing like:

RSM/su (su=Snitty Underling)

There are no reference initials in Mueller's letter. Therefore, Mueller probably wrote it himself.

Barr's a lying liar working in support of the world's bigliest liar ever.

[Marie Burns]

@unwashed: Having no idea about which I write, my best guess is that Mueller & his top prosecutors digested Barr's "interpretation" of their report, & they all were outraged that Barr had essentially dismissed their work. So the Mueller team had a meeting where they discussed how to respond, & Mueller decided the matter was important enough to memorialize their objections in writing. He told staff -- i.e., top prosecutors -- to draft a letter, he reviewed & revised it, & off it went.

This wasn't something Mueller dashed off in a huff, nor was it something he could dispense with in a phone call, as Barr reckoned he should have. The letter is part of the public record; it might have remained secret for a long time, but it didn't. I heard pundits saying they assumed the leak to the press came from the DOJ, but I think it's a lot more likely it came from the same people (who, okay, are technically part of the DOJ) in Mueller's office who leaked their displeasure to the Times & the WashPo a few weeks ago.

Of all the outrageous remarks Barr made in his testimony this week, one that stood out was his claim that Trump was "falsely accused." Barr is throwing his own prosecutors under the bus here, as not only does the Mueller report (my copy is in the mail!) identify numerous instances where Trump himself took advantage of the Russian hacking ops AND obstructed justice, the SDNY essentially identified "Individual 1" as an unindicted co-conspirator in the girlfriends' cover-up business. Barr clearly is acting, not as head of the DOJ, which fingered Trump, but as Trump's defense attorney. He is refuting the DOJ's careful work product by declaring Trump falsely accused. It's Barr's own staff who "falsely accused" Trump.

I'm not suggesting an AG doesn't have a right to reverse the prosecutorial decisions of U.S. attorneys; clearly, he does. But if Barr is going to claim Trump is falsely accused, he should do something about that SDNY charging document that accuses Trump of violating campaign finance law; & he should do so in a very public way, so voters know what he's up to. In the meantime, Barr's Senate testimony, IMO, remains, well, false.

Update: See Patrick's explanation below for how it really works.

[Patrick]

unwashed: re staff paper markings - normally the names of drafting, clearing and authorization organizations and persons are on a separate piece of paper which is not transmitted with the prime document, but remains with the file copy of the writer(s). Typically, a letter like that (Mueller to Barr) would be worked on by "track changes" swaps by quite a few people, but their tracks are removed from the final ("accept all" and voila).

By definition, if something is "written by staff" it reflects the staff understanding of what the principal wishes to convey. The drafting and clearance process offers many team members the opportunity to ensure the product is appropriate. When many edits cause the document to get weird, the drafter has the responsibility to "executive edit" the thing. And the signer (Mueller here) always has the final edit.

The Mueller letter is a good reflection on his team - it is short, gets right to the point, and consists of well-written sentences and paragraphs. Its brevity alone marks it as a good product.

[unwashed]

@ Bea/Patrick, thanks for the clarification/explanation of the letter process.

[RAS]

The Special Council was challenged in court by multiple people. And the courts found the Special Council's mandate was legal every time.

[RAS]

Why is it only the deplorables that will be motivated by impeachment? If Trump is aquitted by the Senate Republicans couldn't that motivate more Democrats and moderates to come out and vote the traitorous criminal(s) out of office? That would also be potentially good for down ballot candidates.

[Akhilleus]

Regarding impeachment, it doesn't matter if Republican traitors in the Senate decline to tell the Traitor-in-Chief that he's been a bad boy, Democrats have a duty under the Constitution to put this asshole on trial. Does your team stay home just because you're playing the 1927 Yankees, and you're almost guaranteed do lose? No. You still go out and give it your best shot. That's what you're being paid to do. Democrats took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Just because Trump and the Republicans spit on that oath is no reason for Democrats to look the other way.

And speaking of the Traitor-in-Chief. I see he has no problem speaking with his Moscow handler, Comrade Putin, about the Mueller report. He just won't talk to congress or the American public about it. And he's trying to stop everyone else from doing so as well. Pretty obvious to see who is important to Trumpskyev and who gets the back of his tiny hand.

[Akhilleus]

It's way beyond hysterical to hear the most contemptuous, politically manipulative, sleazy liar in American political history try to describe those attempting to get to the bottom of his many illegal and treasonous machinations as "politically motivated", then to go on to talk for over an hour to his Russian handler, Vladimir Putin, who moved heaven and earth to get him elected and then to whine to the press that both he and Daddy Vlad decided that there was "no collusion".

Yeah, just like Bernie Madoff declared that his investment con was not a Ponzi scheme.

Even stupider (and more treasonous) is the fact that Russia's moles on Fox--like Hannity and Carlson and the barely sentient, illiterate fools on Fox and Friends, will scream that it's true "NO COLLUSION" when, in fact, collusion wasn't necessary. Trump just allowed Putin to throw rose petals on his path to the White House, and tacks on Clinton's road, and has stated clearly to the press that he will happily allow this same foreign interference to happen again. When asked if he brought up the subject of Russian interference in the 2016 rigged election on his behalf and whether he would demand that Putin keep hands-off, Trump said, "Of course we didn't talk about that."

But natch.