US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1517

Barr sat down with CBS for a lengthy interview regarding the Mueller report, Mueller's statement, and further investigations into the matter that Barr is leading. The whole thing is a good read and gives insight on how Barr thinks and operates. In particular, I find that he's a master of subtext. Here are some of the portions that I found interesting:



So here's Barr saying exactly what I said about the OLC guidelines and Mueller's reasoning for not coming to a charging decision. Frankly, I think that Barr is going out of his way to be charitable to Mueller and the statements that Mueller made at the press conference yesterday by focusing instead upon the argument that Mueller made in his report.



This is quite interesting. First, Barr is letting us know that these conversations that he had with Mueller about the OLC guidelines had other witnesses, including Rosenstein. This means that this is not a "he said, he said" situation involving just Barr and Mueller as the media as tried to portray it (and again, I'm pretty sure that this conversation was recorded). Second, Barr's statement that Mueller was "still thinking it through" strongly suggests that the introduction to Volume 2 may have been thrown in at the last minute, possibly in response to Barr's questioning or even his overall involvement on the matter (it's either that or Mueller was lying to Barr). This smacks of Mueller acting politically. If we accept Barr's testimony (and we have no reason not to) that Mueller told him at this meeting that the OLC guidelines were not the reason for his decision not to charge Trump and that deficiencies in the evidence itself was the reason, and if we look at how quickly that this investigation wrapped up once Barr became AG (thereby creating the inference that Barr reined in Mueller and effectively shut down the investigation upon figuring out that Mueller still had nothing), then what Barr is saying is that Mueller scrambled to find a way to inflict maximum damage upon Trump notwithstanding his inability to come to a charging decision.



Here Barr talks about the origins of his four page summary letter. This is really revealing. Barr never intended to issue such a letter. What he says that he wanted to do was to release the entire report as quickly as possible. He realized ahead of time that the report would contain grand jury material that could not be released as a matter of law, so he directed Mueller's team to mark that material in the report so that it could be quickly and easily redacted. Mueller and his team refused to do this. In retrospect, it's quite obvious now that Mueller's team wanted the public's first impression of the report to be the summaries that they had prepared rather than the report itself. Prosecutors have no business playing politics like this. These people are dirty.



Look how screwed up the interviewer is. He's been so hardwired to believe that Barr misrepresented Mueller's report with his letter that he doesn't even know the basics of what's in Barr's letter. I'm sure that Barr wanted to slap this fucking idiot.



I'm quite annoyed by how frequently this interviewing needlessly interrupts Barr and steps on important points that he's making. This one could be a doozy. What Barr seems to be saying here is that Mueller may not have been driving the bus when it came to writing and issuing the report. It was previously reported that Weissman was the one who largely picked Mueller's team, and the report itself certainly smacks of Weissman's style. Perhaps this is why Mueller was so uncomfortable giving his statement the other day. It wasn't really his statement so much as it was his "staff's." I wonder how much of this investigation was "staff-driven" as opposed to Mueller-driven.



Barr's putting on a master class in trolling right here. He's saying that he doesn't buy the story that this investigation started with legit concerns about the Russians. He damned well knows what happened.





Yep. He knows.



Let me translate: "I brought in Durham because I need to criminally investigate people, and potentially indict some of them."



I don't know what to make of this one. Here, Barr seems to be saying that Huber has been doing something all of this time and that it's about to be wrapped up. On the other hand, Joe DiGenova, who represents one of the main Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, has been adamant that Huber has done fuck-all since Sessions appointed him to look at this stuff. If Huber had been doing something, I would think that DiGenova's client would have been brought before a grand jury already, which has not happened. We'll see. But I will say that this is one of the big tests as to whether Barr is actually going to do his job or whether he's going to sweep all of this under the rug.



This is pretty classic from Barr. He says that "intent is frequently murky issue" and that he doesn't want to infer why people did what they did, but then he goes right to the Strzok/Page texts and says that they're "appalling," "damning," and would be a huge deal if they had been said about Obama and Obama's supporters.



And here Barr hones in on the real issue. What business did Mueller or the FBI have investigating an issue that was always bogus?



I got a good laugh reading this. Barr likes to go out of his way to help everyone involved save face (even Mueller), but what he's really saying here is "I got declassification authority from the president because those fuckers at the agencies weren't cooperating with me. Now they have no choice."



Here's Barr putting the DNI, Brennan, and the other people objecting to his declassification authority in their place. It should also be noted that Barr is saying that intends to actually publish declassified information to the American people to the extent that he can. We'll see what he does.



Barr is saying that he gives no fucks politically.



Like I said, Barr knows what's up, and he intends to do something about it.