The real reason for William Barr’s bonkers press conference about the Mueller report

| 6:04 pm EDT April 17, 2019
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This afternoon it was revealed that Donald Trump’s handpicked Attorney General William Barr will hold a press conference tomorrow morning at 9:30am eastern time in order to discuss the heavily redacted version of the Mueller report that he’s releasing. The mere existence of such a press conference is unusual, to say the least. Considering that Trump himself announced the Barr press conference before Barr could, this thing is going to be completely bonkers.

It’s not yet clear if William Barr will be taking questions and treating this as a real press conference, or if he plans to merely force-feed his own talking points to the media. NBC News says that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who last week asininely defended Barr’s phony “summary” of the Mueller report – will also be on hand for the event. We’re assuming Rosenstein will be there because he wants to erase what last bits of credibility he might still have left.

But the real story here is Barr, of course. The mere fact that Trump was the one to announce the press conference is a sign that Trump is pulling the strings here. Based on his recent tweets and his narcissistic sociopath nature in general, we know that Trump expects Barr to announce that he’s been fully exonerated on all counts. So perhaps Barr will make this announcement, knowing that Trump will be watching, and then release a damaging version of the Mueller report with the knowledge that Trump doesn’t read such things.

In any case, the big question here is just how much of Donald Trump’s criminal dirt will be included in this “redacted” report. William Barr has to release at least some ugly Trump dirt if he wants to maintain any hope of fending off the inevitable release of the full Mueller report. Trump’s decision to send Barr in front of the cameras could well be the result of Barr having warned Trump that ugly dirt will be released tomorrow, and Trump’s subsequent demand that Barr go out there and spin it as positively as possible before the cameras.