Another Trump/Barr flop

The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter. The revelation that U.S. Attorney John Bash, who left the department last week, had concluded his review without criminal charges or any public report will rankle President Trump at a moment when he is particularly upset at the Justice Department. The department has so far declined to release the results of Bash’s work.

  WaPo

No, of course not. But they sure made a big deal out of opening the investigation.

Legal analysts feared Bash’s review was yet another attempt by Trump’s Justice Department to target political opponents of the president. Even if it ultimately produced no results of consequence, legal analysts said, it allowed Trump and other conservatives to say Obama-era officials were under scrutiny, as long as the case stayed active.

[...]

Though “unmasking” is common and appropriate because it allows government officials to better understand a document they are reading, Trump and others suggested the list of requests that ultimately revealed [General Mike] Flynn’s name showed wrongdoing.

Bash’s team was focused not just on unmasking, but also whether Obama-era officials provided information to reporters, according to people familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. But the findings ultimately turned over to Barr fell short of what Trump and others might have hoped, and the attorney general’s office elected not to release them publicly, the people familiar with the matter said.

[...]

Bash announced last week that he was leaving the department — surprising many in the Justice Department because it came so close to the election — though he made no mention of the unmasking review. He said in a statement that he had informed the attorney general of the decision a month earlier and had “accepted an offer for a position in the private sector.”

Before being nominated as the U.S. attorney, Bash worked in the Solicitor General’s Office and as an associate counsel to Trump. Bash thanked Trump and others in the statement, and Barr offered his “gratitude” for Bash’s service.

[...]

Before Bash’s appointment, Kupec had said that a different federal prosecutor, John Durham in Connecticut, also had been looking at unmasking as part of his broader investigation into the FBI’s 2016 probe of whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election. It was not clear how Durham’s and Bash’s work intersected.

Barr recently told some Republican lawmakers that no report of Durham’s investigation would be released before the November election, though unlike Bash’s review, Durham’s work seems to be ongoing, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has in recent days called the delay in the Durham case “a disgrace,” and asserted that his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be jailed. He was previously critical of another prosecutor specially tapped by then-Attorney General Sessions to investigate matters related to Clinton, but whose case ended with no public report or allegations of wrongdoing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.