Senate Democrat: William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report is “brazenly devious”
If Donald Trump’s puppet Attorney General William Barr had released an even halfway believable “summary” of Robert Mueller’s report, more people might be falling for it. But because Barr had to release such an obviously and cartoonishly inaccurate summary, it’s taken all of minutes for the public, the media, and the politicians to begin poking mile-wide holes in Barr’s attempted coverup.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, appeared on MSNBC on Sunday evening and minced no words: “This letter is elegantly but brazenly devious. What [Bill] Barr has done is essentially to frame the message before the facts are available, before the substance is accessible. He has in effect created headlines that will create a trap for all of us.” Blumenthal was just getting started.
The Senator went on to offer a plausible explanation for why Barr’s summary might be claiming that Mueller found no collusion: “The crime of obstruction is designed to prevent destruction of evidence, whether it’s witness tampering or document destruction. So the finding here that there was insufficient evidence to establish collusion may be the result of that obstruction.” There’s also a different theory about Barr having limited his collusion claims to the Russian government itself, as opposed to Russian government representatives.
Senator Blumenthal also seemed to hint that the Democrats could subpoena Trump to testify: “One question I have, which really hasn’t been explored, is why the Special Counsel did not force an interview with Donald Trump. You mentioned earlier that there have been thousands of subpoenas. Why not a subpoena for Donald Trump? I have great respect for Bob Mueller, but I said from the very start that Trump has to be interviewed under oath, just as other presidents have been before.” The Senate Judiciary Committee won’t do that, but the House Judiciary Committee certainly can.
