So many side stories and rivulets to watch over the course of the day. But I note that The Washington Post already seems to be downplaying its scoop that the Report would only be “lightly redacted”. It’s still included in the current versions of their main story. But it appears to have been demoted from the headline and nowhere on the digital front page. Curious to see how that get from Barr’s aides will age over the course of the day. The Post especially seems to have leaned quite far out on the basis of news that almost certainly comes from Barr and his top aides.
All of our coverage of the redacted Mueller report and the accompanying theatrics right here.
As we wait for tomorrow’s follies, I thought it would be interesting to take a detour into the history of the words ‘redaction’ and ‘redact’. Today we know these words refer to those heavy-handed black bars which obscure portions of text in indictments, various court documents, government records and more. But this wasn’t always what these words meant. In fact, the meaning we’re now all buzzing about right now is quite new. Read More
We’ve now gotten more details about about what we’ve basically already known or should have known: the fix is in. The goal here is to max out every avenue to protect the President from the contents of the Report. Bill Barr and his friends at the White House clearly do not care what anyone outside of Trump world thinks at this point. They are not even bothering to keep up appearances at the margins. A good and increasingly relevant question for Bill Barr at this point would be at what point the statutory powers of the Attorney General can amount to obstruction of justice if exercised with corrupt intent.
Let’s go through what we’ve learned this afternoon. Read More
A few early reveals on the dubious handling of the Mueller report:
Fascinating look at how Obama’s departure may have pushed the NRA in a harder extremist direction – beyond anything to do with guns – to stay in business.
Over the last week I’ve been trying to make sense of what seems to be Democrats’ April funk. Some of this seems directly tied to the completion of the Mueller probe and subsequent refusal to share its findings. But as a number of TPM Reader emails I’ve shared in recent days have shown, it goes beyond that. Some of it is simple fatigue. It is difficult to remain engaged and be buffeted by daily outrages and erosions of the edifice of the state after 30 months. But one thing I’ve been particularly struck by – I think growing from each of these factors – is many people thinking Donald Trump is basically a lock or a strong favorite for reelection. Read More
This NRA lawsuit is way, way crazier and more schadenfreude-filled than I’d imagined. You gotta read this.
I’ve mentioned a few times Bill Barr’s history of trying to cover up Republican scandals and whip up Democratic ones. But until yesterday I didn’t know of this, yet another example of Barr’s corrupt history. It’s actually an earlier “summarizes the principal conclusions” memo as part of a different cover-up, back 30 years ago. Read More
March 26, 2019: “It was a complete and total exoneration. The Mueller report was great. It could not have been better.”