I’ll leave this to a further discussion tomorrow. But the Post has now followed up on the Times story with more detail. Their sources say the authors of the Report specifically wrote section summaries that could be quickly or immediately made public. But here’s something to note. The Times story appears based largely on sources close to Barr. The Post story seems mainly based on sources close to the Special Counsel’s Office. More on this tomorrow.
NBC has now added some additional information: “Mueller team members say [the report] includes detailed accounts of Trump campaign contacts with Russia. While Mueller found no coordination or criminal conspiracy, the official said, some team members say his findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation. Some of that information may be classified, the official said, so it’s not clear whether it will be released in a few weeks when Barr makes public a redacted version of the Mueller report.”
oh, new report says Barr fudged the details about collusion too … pic.twitter.com/hnHIUrUe9n
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 4, 2019
New Nadler letter presses Barr on reports he mischaracterized Mueller findings and failed to release summaries intended for easy public release.
Notably, Nadler also wants to see communications between the Special Counsel’s Office and Barr’s DOJ to see if Barr is accurately portraying those interactions.
Overnight we had a number of new stories shedding new light on what should have been obvious from the moment Bill Barr released his letter. Let me start by just pointing out a few key articles. While we’re seeing new information come out about the Mueller report, we should also note the continued credulousness of a lot of the DC press corps in evaluating Barr’s motives and aims in this whole drama. Read More
The Times had a story overnight about how President Trump pushed Mitch McConnell to fast track his nomination for the Chief Counsel of the IRS in the early months of this year, an obviously key position in any fight over securing the President’s taxes. What I was more interested in was the information a bit further down in the article that notes that Michael J. Desmond is actually a one time Trump tax lawyer and long time colleague of William Nelson and Sheri Dillon, Trump’s long time tax attorneys and the folks who put together his purported non-blind blind trust. Remember the press conference with the glued together stacks of papers? Read More
If you’re in the greater DC area or able to get there, I wanted to let you know we’re holding an event in DC the evening of May 9th. We’ll have a special guest speaker and panel discussion after the speech. It’s all focused on congressional oversight – what is happening right now, how it works, how it gets reported on and more. If you’re an Inside member a ticket comes with your membership. But we also have a limited number of tickets available for purchase for Prime members. So if you’re interested in joining us drop us a line and we’ll put you on a list to be notified with more details. It’s an opportunity be part of a very important, thought-provoking discussion and share eats, drinks and conversation with our guests and members of the TPM editorial team. More soon.
Man in charge of releasing Trump’s taxes doesn’t think he should release them.
Important point to remember here, as Natasha Bertrand points out. Back in November 2017, Barr told The New York Times that he thought the “predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the [Clinton] foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called ‘collusion.'” Read More