Blumenthal gets the better of this exchange with Barr, although I’m sympathetic to Ted Cruz’s point in the second clip below that it’s absurd to…
Blumenthal gets the better of this exchange with Barr, although I’m sympathetic to Ted Cruz’s point in the second clip below that it’s absurd to debate the contents of Barr’s summary when we now have nearly the entire Mueller report, including the summaries that Mueller wanted released. That was the point of Mueller’s now famous letter to Barr on March 27: Why haven’t you released the summaries we prepared? Three weeks later, Barr released them plus much more. What’s left to say?
We seem to be having a public debate today about a hypothetical. What if Barr’s initial decision not to release Mueller’s summaries had so strongly shifted public opinion in Trump’s favor that even the full release of the Mueller report a few weeks later couldn’t alter it? What if the “no collusion, no obstruction” conclusions in Barr’s summary were so instantly persuasive that Mueller’s far more ominous treatment of the obstruction issue in his report went completely overlooked by the public? Back in reality, however, it wasn’t overlooked. Trump’s polling did decline a bit after Mueller’s report came out but it’s now stabilized at the ol’ familiar 43 percent mark. I think Mueller may have been worried on March 27 that Barr might get cold feet about ever releasing the summaries, not to mention the full report, and/or that Trump might try to block their release by asserting executive privilege over them.
But that didn’t happen. Mueller’s work is now downloadable in every household in America. Is he still miffed, then, about how Barr handled the summaries or is it now a no-harm-no-foul thing considering that the report is widely available? It’d be nice to have him in front of a microphone.
