He’s also shitting all over the prerogatives of Congress to decide what is obstruction and what is not (by purporting to clear the President of obstruction on his own accord, and also by arrogating to himself the decision on what information they will receive).
I mean, Trump obstructed justice publicly, by railing about the investigators and constantly wailing and screaming about his previous AG. It’s probably not illegal for him to do that, but impeachment isn’t necessarily about criminality. It’s up to Congress to make that call.
If I can play devil’s advocate here, is there anything Barr is doing or has done that really matters? At worst he’s given Trump time to spin what might be some bad news, maybe he’s even helped provide some spin himself. But… so what? At this point everyone is firmly entrenched in their beliefs about whether Trump is guilty as sin based on publicly available info or the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt. A few days of spin prep isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.
At the end of the day we’re getting the Mueller report, which Democrats claim to trust, with reasonable redactions. Those redactions will be categorized for us, and Democratic congresspeople will be able to view a nearly unredacted report. If there’s anything damning enough to make a difference it’s either going to come out in a few minutes or it’s going to come out eventually when congress sees it. I just don’t know what anyone is expecting that will be in there that isn’t already public, and none of the horrendous shit that’s public has mattered so what difference will a few more details make?
Why are you assuming that the coming redactions are “reasonable”? Further, the Democrats still will not see the full report, as I understand it, just a less redacted version.
What Barr is doing is setting the narrative. He’s putting the ball on the 1 yard line and saying “Okay, you’ve got the ball 4th and goal 99 yards away”. He was hired to kill the report by any means necessary, and that’s what he’s doing. Now the GOP can say “The AG says NO COLLUSION” and wash their hands of actually having to look at it.
For the same reason that I think Barr’s summary to congress was essentially accurate – because if they’re not reasonable redactions then we’ll all find that out soon enough. Barr is not an idiot, if he allowed stuff to be redacted when it shouldn’t have been then someone would blow the whistle – either Congress when they get the less redacted report, or someone from Mueller’s team.
My opinion is that to think otherwise is to start using classic conservative cognitive dissonance. Either the Barr summary was accurate or Barr is a filthy liar. In order to him to have been a filthy liar about the summary, he would need to redact a bunch of stuff for bogus reasons. In order for those bogus redactions not to become public he’d have to release a fake “unredacted” report to congress. In order for that fake report not to be found out everyone on Mueller’s team would need to be complicit.
So either reality is what it appears to be there wasn’t a good case for indicting Trump, or I can’t trust anyone or anything.
With regards to Trump and his creatures, I see no reason to trust anything. Those left working for Trump are profoundly dishonest and dishonorable people, based on their own words. It’s crazy to me that anyone would assume honesty and accuracy from such people. Hell, Barr could believe every word he’s saying, and still be profoundly misleading about the contents of the Mueller report.
I really don’t get why you view what I bolded above as a binary choice. There are lots of shades of gray in between for Barr to use as a basis for misdirection. He can, as I believe he did, make partial direct quotes from Mueller’s report and deliberately take them out of context. That’s not quite a “filthy liar,” but it’s far from an honest representation of what Mueller found.
So far as I understand, Barr does not propose to issue a fully unredacted version of the report to Congress. Even if Barr made some weird determination that Trump is not criminally liable for his actions – a matter for keen debate, so far as I’m concerned – he does not get to usurp Congress’s role to determine if Trump has committed impeachable offenses, and for that reason, Congress must have the unredacted version of the report.
Criminal acts are not the only basis to impeach. Sometimes a president is simply unfit. Personally, I think the evidence in this case for such a determination is overwhelming.
When Barr goes before Congress again, I hope he is asked this: if a hypothetical future Justice Department investigates a hypothetical future President, and the President is free to fire anyone in the Justice Department for any reason, without being accused of obstruction – does that not mean that the Executive Branch can never investigate a president?
Because “Barr adds some minor spin to his letter” isn’t exactly going to blow the whole Trump presidency wide open, as many think should happen.
He said the only redactions that will remain in the version Congress sees are those relating to grand jury regulations. A quick look at the report shows that that’s hardly any of the redactions. They’re effectively going to get the whole thing.
There’s been enough information in the public sphere to impeach for the last 2 years and it hasn’t happened. My opinion is that the only thing that could change that is a hard indictment, and Barr’s summary said that wasn’t in the cards. I think the full report will back that up, but I’m still working through it.
It’s not Barr’s role to “add some minor spin to his letter.” His job is to be an impartial arbiter as the top law enforcement official in the country. Barr adding any spin to this matter is wholly disingenuous and should not be acceptable to all Americans. It is a perversion of our justice system.
It’s not the whole thing if they don’t get the underlying grand jury information. This is customarily provided. Again, Barr attempts to shape the narrative. Not. His. Role.
Looking at the two tables of contents, it looks like Mueller excluded most of everything negative to the President (or Barr had it removed - but I don’t think so). For example, there’s no mention of seeing the crimes related to Stormy Daniels and handing that off. Nothing about Saudi Arabia or Israel.
I don’t know, then, whether Mueller wrote another report that lists the other crimes which he handed off, but I suspect that we’ll start to hear rumors of such a thing.