Lying Bill Barr

Despicable.

Attorney General William Barr has become one of the staunchest supporters of the President's campaign against mail-in voting. Speaking in Phoenix on Thursday, Barr continued to push false and negative narratives about mail-in voting. "There's no more secret vote, there's no secret vote," Barr said. "Your name is associated with a particular ballot. The government and the people involved can find out and know how you voted. And it opens up the door to coercion."

  CNN

Bullshit. And he knows it.

Continue reading to find out why that's a lie.

I keep reading/hearing people wondering why Trumpland is trying to delegitimize voting by mail when it's typically older and rural people (Trump supporters, ie) who vote that way. I think it's because they know there will be massive voting by mail, and they want to deligitimize the election itself by claiming it was fraudulent. Not that they want to stop people from voting by mail. They want to throw the election into question.

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

They intend to exhaust you with lies

In his latest warning about the dangers of mass mail-in voting, Attorney General William P. Barr pointed to a case in Texas that he said highlighted the risk of fraud.

“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr told CNN on Wednesday. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected, he — from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?”

Federal prosecutors brought no such indictment. And while a Justice Department spokeswoman said Barr was referring to a local prosecution involving suspected mail-in voting fraud in a city council election, the assistant district attorney on that case said Barr’s description doesn’t match the facts.

“That’s not what happened at all,” said Andy Chatham, who is now in private practice.

[...]

After being asked about Chatham’s account, Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement: “Prior to his interview, the Attorney General was provided a memo prepared within the Department that contained an inaccurate summary about the case which he relied upon when using the case as an example.”

  WaPo

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

"What the hell is going on at DOJ" indeed

A senior Department of Justice official on Wednesday corrected comments by Attorney General William Barr, who minutes earlier had said 200 arrests had been made within two weeks in Kansas City as part of Operation Legend, a federal anti-crime effort.

Barr’s comments had come during a news conference Wednesday about the operation, which is said to be sending hundreds of federal agents into the metro area to stop a surge of violent crime in the city.

“Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,” Barr had said.

  KC Star

Wrong.

Speaking with McClatchy after the Wednesday event, the senior Justice Department official clarified that the 200 figure included arrests dating back to December 2019.

It also included, the official said, both state and FBI arrests in joint operations.

Bill Barr is a proven liar. (Ask Robert Mueller.) Believe nothing he says.

The official said Barr was referring to the number of arrests made in the city since the launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit, a precursor effort to Operation Legend that surged federal agents in U.S. cities facing crime waves, including Kansas City.

I guess it's fitting they give them military operations type names.

Wednesday’s statement by Barr came just two days after the first charge was announced in connection with Operation Legend.

Monty W. Ray, 20, of Kansas City, was arrested Friday by an Independence officer and an agent with the U.S. Marshals Service. Ray was charged Monday in federal court with being an unlawful drug user in possession of firearms, according to a criminal complaint.

Since you can't charge someone with protesting, I guess. Or for caring firearms in Missouri, for that matter.

Prior to the DOJ’s correction of the misinformation, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas had cast doubt on the claim. Lucas said that he was aware only of one arrest that had been announced by the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas City.

“You can’t verify it because nothing can be verified... This is where some of the confusion goes on,” Lucas said.

[...]

Matthew Miller, a former DOJ official, was shocked by Barr’s statement after The Star reported on its inaccuracy.

“Wow. Barr says today there have been 200 arrests in the past two weeks. KC says the real number is more like one. Then DOJ backtracks and says 200 is since December and includes local arrests. What the hell is going on at DOJ?” tweeted Miller, who led the DOJ’s public affairs from 2009 to 2011 during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Probably wasn't actually shocked.

On Thursday, the White House touted the operation as a successful federal response to violent crime.

Not a federal responsibility.

Tim Garrison, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, [...] said Monday that any federal agents making arrests as part of the new operation to reduce violent crime locally will be clearly identifiable.

Like they are in Portland?

He said the effort would not bear any resemblance to the operation playing out in Portland, Oregon.

Except for the part where they are federal officers interfering in states' policing activities, the actual operation.

“These agents won’t be patrolling the streets,” Garrison said. “They won’t replace or usurp the authority of local officers.”

Then why are they there?

“At a time when confidence and trust in the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement is at a low point, the last thing you want is to have someone suggest you are padding your numbers to make a political point or that the Attorney General is unaware of the situation on the ground in Kansas City,” said Stephen Hill, Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri from 1993 to 2001 during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Either one hurts the effort and the public confidence it needs to be successful.”

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced the expansion of Operation Legend into additional cities around the country, defying local government officials who have warned that he lacked the authority to send federal agents into their streets.

[...]

Following the expansion announcement, Lucas said Trump was “exploiting the pain of our particularly Black community” during an election year.

“I do have concerns with the president’s racial undertones in his rhetoric. When I was growing up they used to call it dog-whistling. I think the president has exceeded that,” Lucas said.

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

Sometimes, you aren't sure who's lying

We do know Barr is a liar, so until proven otherwise, I'm going with Barr as the liar here.  But, Carpenito DID know he wasn't qualified, so....?

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

Antifa scare tatics

An NPR review of court documents for 51 individuals who are facing federal charges related to the demonstrations found no alleged connections to the anti-fascist movement.

The lack of alleged links seemingly contradicts comments by Attorney General William Barr and President Trump singling out of anti-fascists for inciting violence during the protests.

Out of the 51 cases brought to the department so far, 20 involve allegations relating to arson, typically of government property or buildings, 16 involve allegations relating to illegal possession of a firearm, usually by a felon, and eight involve allegedly inciting a riot or civil disorder, according to NPR.

The only mention of an extremist group in court documents is in a case against three Nevada men who allegedly belong to the right-wing "Boogaloo" movement, which aims to incite a civil war. These three were charged with plotting violence in the demonstrations in Las Vegas.

Former federal prosecutors told NPR that if the government had a sign that individuals had alleged ties or an interest in an extremist movement, it would be included in the charging documents used during a bail hearing.

[...]

Barr has vowed to prosecute the “extremist agitators” involved in the recent protests, pointing specifically at those connected with antifa.

Trump has also blamed antifa activists for the violence that erupted within the demonstrations, saying on May 31 that he would designate antifa as a terrorist organization.

But experts say the antifa movement is not a solidified group and is more a liquid movement of people opposing fascism without central leadership.

When asked about the alleged lack of leadership, Barr said "there are people who could be characterized as leaders in any given situation."

  The Hill

Jesus that asshat is a weasel.

Also, thanks to the Trumpalos...

Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is not an actual organization controlling protesters and inciting to violence. But you may have heard that’s the case from social media in the wake of the protests against racism and police brutality that have swept the United States.

[...]

You also may have heard that “Antifa buses” are heading to your city to wreak havoc with their violence, but it’s nothing more than a hoax that went viral on social media.

[...]

Antifa chatter spiked online, with false rumors spreading with the help of fake social media accounts. In one such case, a Twitter account was created by a white nationalist group to spread fear, per NBC News.

The new Antifa bus hoaxes are tailored to specific regions to spread panic and misinformation locally, even though they’ve already been confirmed to be fake news. A family riding in a bus while camping was even harassed on Friday as people thought they were members of Antifa, via PeninsulaDailyNews:

Later that day in Forks, a multi-racial family of four from Spokane was followed by at least four vehicles — some with people with guns, they told deputies — as they left Forks Outfitters in a full-sized school bus. The family was trapped when they tried to leave their campsite after trees were felled to block the road, Clallam County Sheriff’s deputies said.

They were able to leave after four high school students cut the trees with chainsaws, said Sgt. Ed Anderson in a press release issued late Thursday.

[...]

Even a bus fleet owner in the region had to reach out on Facebook, inviting people to flag posts that may contain false information about his busses. “If anyone sees a post about my bus. Please flag it and get it taken down,” the person said, adding that a driver “was driving home from work, and someone posted it saying it’s full of Antifa.” His post was shared 38 times, but a far more popular post warned people to prepare for an imminent Antifa attack in the region.

[...]

Some police officers fell for the Antifa hoax, such as Curry County Sheriff John Ward, who posted a warning on a Facebook page he manages. “I don’t know if the rumors are true or not just yet, but I got information about 3 (busloads) of ANTIFA protestors (who) are making their way from Douglas County headed for Coquille then to Coos Bay,” the post read on the now-deleted Facebook page. Ward told KTVL that the information was forwarded to him by the county attorney, who got it from a “kind of” private attorney.

  BGR

Might be expected that a sheriff would validate a rumor like that before spreading it. But not this one:

“Without asking, I am sure we have a lot of local boys too with guns that will protect our citizens and their property,” the message read.

That's why they get called pigs.

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

Trump taint

The debate over William P. Barr’s future as attorney general is unfolding in an alternate reality.

[...]

In this magical place, Barr’s loyalists can leak word that, by golly, Barr just might quit if Trump keeps publicly trying to manipulate ongoing cases. This is meant to insulate Barr from Trump’s taint.

But in the real world, here’s what’s staring us in the face: For Trump, the very public nature of his efforts to corrupt law enforcement is a key feature of those efforts, not a byproduct of them that he pathologically can’t control.

[...]

Trump “has told those around him he is not going to stop tweeting about the Justice Department." [...] According to officials, “Trump considers highlighting what he sees as misconduct at the FBI and Justice Department as a good political message.”

[...]

[T]he public and unabashed declaration of the power to confer impunity on the guilty — to declare the guilty innocent simply because they were investigated for wrongdoing just as he was, meaning he is one of them — is the whole point of it.

[...]

He has continued publicly attacking the whole process surrounding the [Roger Stone] case, justifying this by claiming he is the “chief law enforcement officer” of the United States and as such is “allowed to be totally involved.”

Trump is appropriating for himself the power to render any effort by our system to parcel out justice to his cronies to be illegitimate simply by declaring it so. The public flaunting of this power — the power to corrupt, while pretending to be doing the opposite — is a key feature of it.

[...]

Trump has put on the table a radical departure from the orthodox understanding of the proper role of the president’s political preferences in law enforcement investigations and prosecutorial decisions. Whether Trump’s conduct ultimately reinforces the orthodox understanding, erodes it, or upends it entirely will be largely a function of the extent to which the political system tolerates or punishes him for it.

  WaPo

So far, it looks like it's going to be tolerated.

[I]t’s only going to get worse — and more public — from here on out.

Yep.

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

It's Sunday

Bill Barr gave a speech.

Holy shit!

No, I mean it.  That is some holy shit.  And some serious projection.

The Trump appointee described a “war” against a “duly elected government” at a conference of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has played a key role in the administration’s efforts to seat record numbers of right-leaning federal judges.

“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of resistance against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law,” Barr told his audience of lawyers at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.

  WaPo

What? They didn't hold it at a Trump hotel?

To critics, the speech was overly partisan and even “authoritarian.” It prompted some calls for Barr’s impeachment from lawyers and legal scholars, many of whom believe his views of presidential power are too expansive.

[...]

The speech drew praise, however, from Trump supporters who have long said the administration has been unfairly attacked. And inside the Mayflower Hotel, Barr got enthusiastic applause.

[...]

Barr recently declined Trump’s request that he hold a news conference defending Trump in the [impeachment] inquiry by saying the president broke no laws in a call to Ukraine’s president, sources familiar with the situation told The Washington Post.

Barr must be on an apology tour.

But the attorney general was vociferous Friday in his defense of Trump’s actions in office, saying legislators are the ones who have overstepped their bounds. Judges, too, have interfered with the president’s authority in recent years, he said.

“I don’t deny that Congress has some implied authority,” he said. “But the sheer volume of what we see today, the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations through an avalanche of subpoenas, is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch and indeed is touted as such.”

Touted as such by Republicans!

Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration, called the attorney general’s statements “authoritarian,” comparing the Federalist Society talk to another Barr speech that criticized “radical secularists.”

Barr’s talk was “an attack on our Constitution and on the rule of law,” the University of Minnesota law professor tweeted.

[...]

His “vision of presidential power is contrary to the constitutional system of checks and balances that lies at the heart of our Constitution,” Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University, testified at hearings on Barr’s nomination.

The remarks about Democrats ignoring the rule of law were especially ironic because they came a mere hours after Roger Stone, one of Trump’s previous advisers, was convicted on all counts for lying to Congress during its probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

[...]

“Yesterday AG Barr addressed a radical political group and gave one of the most vicious partisan screeds ever uttered by a US cabinet officer,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) tweeted Saturday morning. “Barr says trump should have king-like powers. Barr is a liar and a fanatic and should be impeached and stripped of his law licenses.”

  Mother Jones

Memory problems

There's a simple answer if it didn't happen:  No.

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

The chilling effects of Bar's investigation

We are now learning extraordinary new details about the lengths to which William P. Barr is going in service of President Trump’s corrupt and all-consuming goal of making core truths about his 2016 election victory disappear.

[...]

Barr appears determined to discredit the special counsel investigation’s finding that Russia engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in our election on Trump’s behalf.

[...]

Barr has already claimed “spying” on Trump’s campaign occurred, feeding Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory of a “deep state” plot to block him from getting elected.

[...]

What if Barr’s activities — whether by coincidence or design — end up chilling how intelligence officials respond to the next foreign effort to sabotage a U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf?

  WaPo

It's not enough that Trump won. He needs to change the narrative surrounding his win to match what he wanted it to be in his head.

“This is designed to validate a conspiracy theory — that Russia didn’t interfere, and that the whole Mueller probe was a ‘witch hunt,’” [Rep. Tom] Malinowski, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told me. The goal, he said, is to paint the intelligence community and FBI as the “villains in that conspiracy theory.”

[...]

“There’s a message to our intelligence community, which is, ‘Don’t go there,’” Malinowski told me. “They’re being investigated for doing their jobs the last time.”

What’s more, Malinowski pointed out, foreign intelligence officials and governments might take a similar message from Barr’s efforts to enlist them in his current internal review.

“Are you going to share intelligence with this administration next year if you pick up evidence of Russian interference?” Malinowski noted, referring to foreign officials, who will ask themselves: “How will such information be received by the Trump administration? Do you pass along something that is clearly unwanted?”

Another reason that Nancy Pelosi's (and others') desire to let the 2020 election remove Trump from office was so dangerously misguided.

Making that point more salient, The Post reports that Barr has taken a “sustained interest” in a conspiracy theory holding that the European academic who originally alerted Trump adviser George Papadopoulos to dirt Russia gathered on Hillary Clinton — which led to the FBI probe — was actually a plant hoping to falsely entrap the Trump campaign.

And one source tells The Post that in his conversations with British officials, Barr “expressed a belief” that the investigation of Russian interference “stemmed from some corrupt origin.”

A second source denies that characterization. But it simply cannot be dismissed as a very real possibility.

Even if that were true, what the investigation turned up was hugely important to the life of this country's apparently very fragile democracy.

One key thing that Trump demanded of the Ukrainian president in the July 25 call is help validating a whackjob conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 email hacks. This, too, would magically make the truth about 2016 disappear — and in [Trump's July 25] call, Trump directed the Ukrainian president to work with Barr to make it true.

The Justice Department has denied any such Barr involvement. But here again, we already know that Barr’s Justice Department helped direct efforts to keep Congress from learning of the whistleblower complaint detailing that corrupt pressure on a foreign leader to interfere in the next U.S. election. Barr didn’t recuse himself from that, despite being personally named in the complaint.

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

Barr is as slimey and medacious as his boss

Actually, they can be forgiven for thinking that.  Trump has said as much himself.

July 5, 2019, 10:21 AM CDT / Updated July 5, 2019, 2:11 PM CDT

By Dartunorro Clark

President Donald Trump on Friday said he is looking at issuing an executive order to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

"We're thinking about doing that, we have four or five ways we can do it, it's one of the ways we're thinking about doing it very seriously," Trump said when asked about using an executive order to add the question.

"We can start the printing (of the census forms) now and maybe do an addendum after we get a positive decision, so we're working on a lot of things, including an executive order," he added.

  NBC

Aaaaaaaaaaaand...



Barr himself.

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

UPDATE:

He's gotta be lovin' this

Got the "Fake News" reporting opposite stories.

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

UPDATE 7/11:

Right on cue...

Actually, they can be forgiven for thinking that.  Trump has said as much himself.

July 5, 2019, 10:21 AM CDT / Updated July 5, 2019, 2:11 PM CDT

By Dartunorro Clark

President Donald Trump on Friday said he is looking at issuing an executive order to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

"We're thinking about doing that, we have four or five ways we can do it, it's one of the ways we're thinking about doing it very seriously," Trump said when asked about using an executive order to add the question.

"We can start the printing (of the census forms) now and maybe do an addendum after we get a positive decision, so we're working on a lot of things, including an executive order," he added.

  NBC

Aaaaaaaaaaaand...



Barr himself.

UPDATE:

How'd Bill do in the Senate? - Addendum to How's Bill doing in the Senate series

The story is that Biden pressured Ukraine to get a a prosecutor dismissed as to protect his son's interests.

At one point, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if then-prosecutor Viktor Shokin wasn’t ousted. Shokin, who had been accused of ignoring corruption in his own office, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.

But the Times noted Biden’s son, Hunter, had a stake in the outcome. Hunter Biden at the time was on the board of an energy company, Burisma Holdings, owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, and making as much as $50,000 per month for his work. And the newspaper said the oligarch had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor.

The former vice president’s campaign maintained Joe Biden was acting to carry out U.S. policy and not protecting the interests of his son. In fact, Biden’s campaign claims he learned of his son’s role in the energy company from news reports.

  Newsmax

Sure, I believe that.



And will she or anyone else do anything about it?  I think I know the answer to that question. Some people, however, have spent some time behind bars for lying to Congress.



Don't hold your breath.

Pelosi also told her colleagues during the meeting that she couldn’t sleep Wednesday night after watching Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, during which he challenged Mueller’s legal theories and framework and endeared himself to Trump and his GOP allies.

She added that impeachment is “too good for” President Donald Trump, reiterating her opposition to launching impeachment proceedings even as a growing chorus of Democrats is calling for just that.

  Politico

[Barr] knows that Senate Democrats don’t have the votes or the power to do anything substantial to impair his tragic choice to protect President Trump from the substantiated allegations against him. And so the nation’s chief law enforcement official and top prosecutor, at taxpayer expense, spent hours spinning like a defense attorney with his client’s liberty on the line.

[...]

It was as disgraceful a performance by an attorney general as I have seen in 22 years as a legal analyst and commentator. And I say that having extensively covered the hapless appearances of Alberto Gonzales. He was the attorney general at the heart of the Bush administration’s U.S. Attorney scandal a decade ago. At least he had the excuse of being as dumb as a rock. Barr is no dummy. He knows precisely what he’s doing. His audience is an audience of one. It always has been. And he made it clear Wednesday, as if it had not been before, that he is no honest broker for the Justice Department. He’s just another hack.

[...]

Barr refused to show a shred of independence from Trump or even pretend he needed to. The attorney general refused even to acknowledge what we all know to be true and what littered the Mueller report: that the president lied and deceived, repeatedly, for a long period, to protect himself and his political interests.

[...]

Never mind the legal definitions of obstruction of justice or conspiracy, or the procedural standards under which federal prosecutors are supposed to operate, or the superheated politics of our time, Barr told lawmakers that he began to work on his letter exonerating Trump before he received the Mueller report. In response to a question by Sen. Kamala Harris, for example, he even conceded that neither he or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have eve[r] reviewed the underlying evidence that the special counsel compiled.

[...]

It’s jarring to get the feeling, through hours of contentious testimony, that Barr wasn’t remotely interested in signaling to lawmakers, or the rest of us, that he can be trusted to shepherd the 14 or so other active federal investigations that Mueller referred to prosecutors in New York and other offices around the nation.

[...]

Maybe I missed it, it’s possible, but I did not see or hear a single Republican member of the committee say a single critical thing about the president in the wake of Mueller’s work. Nor was anyone on that side of the room particularly critical of Barr. Instead, from Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, we got a promise at the end of the hearing that there was no need to call Mueller himself to testify before the committee.

[...]

They don’t want to hear from former White House Counsel Don McGahn, whom Trump asked to lie, or from anyone else who chronicled the ways in which the president tried to cover up his Russia ties. Instead, the same folks who gave us Kenneth Starr and endless Benghazi hearings now say they will spend their time trying to dig up more dirt about Hillary Clinton and trying to bash the FBI.

[...]

It will have to be the House that subpoenas Mueller or McGahn to testify. It will have to be the House that calls Barr onto the carpet for his attempt to trick the American people into thinking Mueller’s report was kinder and gentler to the president than it actually was.

“We’re out of it,” Barr said at one point. “We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”

  Rolling Stone

As he investigates Hillary and the FBI.

Also, it appears Rudy Giuliani never filed that Mueller report rebuttal they said was coming and that Barr gave them the report before releasing it so they'd have a jump start.  Haven't heard a thing about it since mid-April.

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

UPDATE:



Yes, Pat.  What are you going to do about it?

Who leaked this addendum

And I want to know why they were willing to risk their reputations and possible legal repercussions to do it.  Are they really just completely without integrity?  Or is there something they need to hide at all cost?

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










LOL.  If only Mueller had actually said that.





UPDATE:

Wow, who leaked this?

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.

[...]

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

  WaPo

I assume the House will be bringing Mueller in for testimony.

“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. “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 letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials.

[...]

Justice Department officials said Tuesday that they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and that it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page memo to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.

[...]

“After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said 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.

[...]

"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.”

[...]

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 said that, in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but that the two men did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.

Barr said he did not want to put out pieces of the report, but rather issue the document all at once with redactions, and that he didn’t want to change course, according to officials.

[...]

Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.

So charge Barr and Rosenstein with obstruction of justice while you're at it.  And Barr with lying to Congress.





Is there no crime in intending to deceive without actual lies?










Trump keeps squawking about an attempted coup against him.  The attempt at a coup is coming from inside his administration.

UPDATE:





UPDATE: