Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation. — Justin Amash

Thread
  1.  15 hours ago
    After receiving Mueller’s report, Barr wrote and released a letter on March 24 describing Barr’s own decision not to indict the president for obstruction of justice. That letter selectively quotes and summarizes points in Mueller’s report in misleading ways.
    346 replies3,689 retweets16,904 likes
     
     
     
  2.  15 hours ago
    Mueller’s report says he chose not to decide whether Trump broke the law because there’s an official DoJ opinion that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional, and because of concerns about impacting the president’s ability to govern and pre-empting possible impeachment.
    548 replies3,231 retweets15,128 likes
     
     
     
  3.  15 hours ago
    Barr’s letter doesn’t mention those issues when explaining why Mueller chose not to make a prosecutorial decision. He instead selectively quotes Mueller in a way that makes it sound—falsely—as if Mueller’s decision stemmed from legal/factual issues specific to Trump’s actions.
    178 replies3,500 retweets16,337 likes
     
     
     
  4.  15 hours ago
    But, in fact, Mueller finds considerable evidence that several of Trump’s actions detailed in the report meet the elements of obstruction, and Mueller’s constitutional and prudential issues with indicting a sitting president would preclude indictment regardless of what he found.
    176 replies3,453 retweets15,577 likes
     
     
     
  5.  15 hours ago
    In noting why Barr thought the president’s intent in impeding the investigation was insufficient to establish obstruction, Barr selectively quotes Mueller to make it sound as if his analysis was much closer to Barr’s analysis than it actually was:
    67 replies2,731 retweets13,727 likes
     
     
     
  6.  15 hours ago
    Barr quotes Mueller saying the evidence didn’t establish that Trump was personally involved in crimes related to Russian election interference, and Barr then claims that Mueller found that fact relevant to whether the president had the intent to obstruct justice.
    70 replies2,463 retweets12,487 likes
     
     
     
  7.  15 hours ago
    But Mueller’s quote is taken from a section in which he describes other improper motives Trump could have had and notes: “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” None of that is in Barr’s letter.
    74 replies3,005 retweets14,226 likes
     
     
     
  8.  15 hours ago
    As a result of Barr’s March 24 letter, the public and Congress were misled. Mueller himself notes this in a March 27 letter to Barr, saying that Barr’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”
    91 replies3,288 retweets14,367 likes
     
     
     
  9.  15 hours ago
    Mueller: “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
    73 replies2,930 retweets13,623 likes
     
     
     
  10.  15 hours ago
    To “alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen,” Mueller urged the release of the report’s introductions and executive summaries, which he had told Barr “accurately summarize [Mueller’s] Office’s work and conclusions.”
    46 replies2,717 retweets13,029 likes
     
     
     
  11.  15 hours ago
    Barr declined; he allowed the confusion to fester and only released the materials three weeks later with the full redacted report. In the interim, Barr testified before a House committee and was misleading about his knowledge of Mueller’s concerns:
    76 replies2,749 retweets13,257 likes
     
     
     
  12.  15 hours ago
    Barr was asked about reports “that members of [Mueller’s] team are frustrated…with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they’re referencing with that?”
    52 replies2,515 retweets12,365 likes
     
     
     
  13.  15 hours ago
    Barr absurdly replied: “No, I don’t…I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” Yet Mueller had directly raised those concerns to Barr, and Barr says he “suspect[s]” they “probably” wanted more materials put out, as if Mueller hadn’t directly told him that.
    87 replies2,813 retweets13,660 likes
     
     
     
  14.  15 hours ago
    In subsequent statements and testimony, Barr used further misrepresentations to help build the president’s false narrative that the investigation was unjustified.
    75 replies2,747 retweets12,962 likes
     
     
     
  15.  15 hours ago
    Barr notes that Mueller did not “find any conspiracy to violate U.S. law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign.” He then declares that Mueller found “no collusion” and implies falsely that the investigation was baseless.
    72 replies2,591 retweets12,526 likes
     
     
     
  16.  15 hours ago
    But whether there’s enough evidence for a conviction of a specific crime which Mueller thought was appropriate to charge is a different and much higher standard than whether the people whom Mueller investigated had done anything worthy of investigation.
    53 replies2,442 retweets12,382 likes
     
     
     
  17.  15 hours ago
    In truth, Mueller’s report describes concerning contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and people in or connected to the Russian government.
    158 replies3,331 retweets14,068 likes
     
     
     
  18.  15 hours ago
    For instance, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner took a meeting with a Russian lawyer whom Trump Jr. had been told worked for the Russian government and would provide documents to “incriminate Hillary,” as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
    181 replies3,038 retweets13,537 likes
     
     
     
  19.  15 hours ago
    It’s wrong to suggest that the fact that Mueller did not choose to indict anyone for this means there wasn’t a basis to investigate whether it amounted to a crime or “collusion,” or whether it was in fact part of Russia’s efforts to help Trump’s candidacy.
    98 replies2,786 retweets13,212 likes
     
     
     
  20.  15 hours ago
    Barr says the White House “fully cooperated” with the investigation and that Mueller “never sought” or “pushed” to get more from the president, but the report says Mueller unsuccessfully sought an interview with the president for over a year.
    124 replies3,634 retweets14,775 likes
     
     
     
  21.  15 hours ago
    The report says the president’s counsel was told that interviewing him was “vital” to Mueller’s investigation and that it would be in the interest of the public and the presidency. Still Trump refused.
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  22.  15 hours ago
    The president instead gave written answers to questions submitted by the special counsel. Those answers are often incomplete or unresponsive. Mueller found them “inadequate” and again sought to interview the president.
    175 replies3,242 retweets14,370 likes
     
     
     
  23.  15 hours ago
    Ultimately, the special counsel “recogniz[ed] that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily” and chose not to subpoena him because of concerns that the resulting “potentially lengthy constitutional litigation” would delay completion of the investigation.
    260 replies3,400 retweets15,399 likes
     
     
     
  24.  15 hours ago
    Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people. This will continue if those who have read the report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth.
    3,192 replies10,007 retweets32,613 likes