Opinion: What is William Barr up to?
By E.J. Dionne Jr. E.J. Dionne Jr. Columnist covering national politics Email Bio Follow Columnist April 3 at 2:14 PM The House Judiciary Committee should not have had to vote Wednesday to subpoena special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It should already have been sent to Congress. The fact that the body’s Democrats had to take this forcing action underscores why Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the document so far is irresponsible — and, yes, suspicious.
And note also that Barr’s own words said Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia.” The phase “did not establish” is not the same as “did not find,” but we have no way of knowing, absent the report itself, how significant that difference is. What we do know is that Barr seems to have put the best possible spin for Trump on what Mueller himself wrote.
But wait a minute: Did Mueller’s decision not to make a call mean that it was Barr’s decision to make? There is nothing that automatically gives Barr that power. Perhaps Mueller intended to leave the decision on obstruction to Congress, not to Barr. Maybe Mueller was silent on this issue in his report. Maybe he wasn’t. We can’t know, because we haven’t seen the report.
“My March 24 letter was not, and did not purport to be, an exhaustive recounting of the Special Counsel’s investigation or report. … I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report or to release it in serial or piecemeal fashion.”
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