Five questions for William Barr, in light of new Mueller revelations

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/01/five-questions-william-barr-light-new-mueller-revelations/

Attorney General William P. Barr is set to face two days of grilling by congressional Democrats. Fortuitously, this comes just after we’ve learned that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III privately criticized Barr’s highly misleading summary of the Mueller report, which gave President Trump weeks to falsely spin Mueller’s findings as “complete and total exoneration.”

Mueller wrote a letter to Barr only three days after Barr released his four-page summary, as The Post reports, complaining that Barr’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”

“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mueller continued, adding that this will undercut “full public confidence” in the investigation’s findings, thus undermining a “central purpose” of the appointment of a special counsel in the first place. Upon reading the phrase “public confusion,” Barr probably nodded with satisfaction, and said to himself: Mission accomplished. Here are a few lines of questioning Barr will likely face when he is questioned by the Senate and House judiciary committees on Wednesday and Thursday:

Why did Barr mislead Congress about Mueller’s views on the Barr summary?

In early April, Mueller’s team leaked their frustration over Barr’s summary, complaining it downplayed their conclusions, particularly on Trump’s obstruction of justice. At a congressional hearing soon after, Barr was pressed to say whether he knew what was behind those leaks, and replied: “No, I don’t.”

In fact, we now know Barr had been informed directly by Mueller of the latter’s concerns, well before this hearing.

“That was deliberately false and misleading,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told CBS News, noting: “What Barr is going to have to explain today is why he deliberately misled the Congress.”

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[at140]

1. Barr looks nervous?

Anyone else thinks that?