BARR

[cradleandshoot]

.. ...aren't the members of Nadler's Judiciary Comm lawyers themselves ?

The show boating (D) hack Committee members are afraid to question Barr themselves.
They're afraid of the video clips.

Barr vs mental & legal giants Lieu, Swalwell, Jeffries, Jackson Lee.
No wonder they want to hide behind their squires.

Old Salt sometimes it appears to me like you are in a never ending battle of wits with a group of unarmed opponents...

Salty is unarmed with facts on this one.

Who did the GOP questioning during the Kavanauagh hearings? Some outside lady lawyer hired by the GOP for the task IIRC.

Who did the questioning during Whitewater, Iran Contra, Watergate? Staff lawyers IIRC. Google up Fred Thompson for one.

Totally standard procedure. Only a doofus would advocate to have six different people pose questions in five minute segments? A sensible person would have one person do questions for 30 minutes.

Did you just use the word sensible to describe any or some or all of this nonsense? Do sensible people even exist in DC in this day and age?

[old salt]

.. ...aren't the members of Nadler's Judiciary Comm lawyers themselves ?

The show boating (D) hack Committee members are afraid to question Barr themselves.
They're afraid of the video clips.

Barr vs mental & legal giants Lieu, Swalwell, Jeffries, Jackson Lee.
No wonder they want to hide behind their squires.

Old Salt sometimes it appears to me like you are in a never ending battle of wits with a group of unarmed opponents...

Salty is unarmed with facts on this one.

Who did the GOP questioning during the Kavanauagh hearings? Some outside lady lawyer hired by the GOP for the task IIRC.

Who did the questioning during Whitewater, Iran Contra, Watergate? Staff lawyers IIRC. Google up Fred Thompson for one.

Totally standard procedure. Only a doofus would advocate to have six different people pose questions in five minute segments? A sensible person would have one person do questions for 30 minutes.

Kavanaugh was a confirmation hearing, not routine Congressional oversight of a cabinet member.
Cabinet secy's should not have to answer to staff flunkies, unless it's a select committee investigation or impeachment proceeding.

The 5 min segments are something the show ponies set up for themselves.
Surely one of the (D) legal giants on the committee is up to the task of questioning Barr.
The other (D) members can yield their time to their best inquisitor.
It's harder to play "stump the dummy" when the dummy is asking the questions.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics ... index.html

CNN could not locate an instance where a Cabinet official was interviewed by staff members during a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

[cradleandshoot]

.. ...aren't the members of Nadler's Judiciary Comm lawyers themselves ?

The show boating (D) hack Committee members are afraid to question Barr themselves.
They're afraid of the video clips.

Barr vs mental & legal giants Lieu, Swalwell, Jeffries, Jackson Lee.
No wonder they want to hide behind their squires.

Old Salt sometimes it appears to me like you are in a never ending battle of wits with a group of unarmed opponents...

Salty is unarmed with facts on this one.

Who did the GOP questioning during the Kavanauagh hearings? Some outside lady lawyer hired by the GOP for the task IIRC.

Who did the questioning during Whitewater, Iran Contra, Watergate? Staff lawyers IIRC. Google up Fred Thompson for one.

Totally standard procedure. Only a doofus would advocate to have six different people pose questions in five minute segments? A sensible person would have one person do questions for 30 minutes.

Kavanaugh was a confirmation hearing, not routine Congressional oversight of a cabinet member.
Cabinet secy's should not have to answer to staff flunkies, unless it's a select committee investigation or impeachment proceeding.

The 5 min segments are something the show ponies set up for themselves.
Surely one of the (D) legal giants on the committee is up to the task of questioning Barr.
The other (D) members can yield their time to their best inquisitor.
It's harder to play "stump the dummy" when the dummy is asking the questions.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics ... index.html

CNN could not locate an instance where a Cabinet official was interviewed by staff members during a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

Rock on Old Salt... Rock On... I only wish I had your ability to disagree and be respectful to those you disagree with. That could be the defining difference between a naval aviator and a ground pounding infantry soldier.

[Chips O'Toole]

Well, that lying, leaking, left wing nut job and witch hunt captain, Robert Mueller, has the nerve to call into question Bill Barr's summaries of the so-called Mueller Report. And how does Mueller have any standing to opine on the content of the Mueller Report, anyway? Barr and Rosenrose are the martini-soaked pilots landing this 747 loaded with rubber dog excrement. Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

[holmes435]

Seems like perjury is a pretty cut and dry impeachment for Barr as far as the House goes. Does anyone know the procedure? I'm assuming they need the Senate on board? No chance that piece of trash McConnell goes along if so.

[old salt]

.. ...did not fully capture the context ? The entire friggin report is available for everyone to read.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... a90bcf6bb1

A day after Mueller sent his letter to Barr, the two men spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.

In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.

When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.

Justice Department officials said that, in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but that the two men did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.

Barr also gave Mueller his personal phone number and told him to call if he had future concerns, officials said.

from NYT bombshell :
Mr Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr Mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report. They expressed irritation that Mr Mueller fell short of his assignment by declining to make a decision about whether Mt Trump broke the law. That left Mr Barr to clear Mr Trump without the special counsel's backing.

Ranger Bob needs to stop sweating cable news spin & letting the NYT/WP start fights which involve him.
The public can read his report & draw their own conclusions.
If Ranger Bob thought Trump should be impeached for obstruction, why didn't he just say so in his report ?
Marines & Rangers don't whine about context.

[old salt]

.. ...did not fully capture the context ? The entire friggin report is available for everyone to read.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... a90bcf6bb1

A day after Mueller sent his letter to Barr, the two men spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.

In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.

When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.

Justice Department officials said that, in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but that the two men did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.

Barr also gave Mueller his personal phone number and told him to call if he had future concerns, officials said.

from NYT bombshell :
Mr Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr Mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report. They expressed irritation that Mr Mueller fell short of his assignment by declining to make a decision about whether Mt Trump broke the law. That left Mr Barr to clear Mr Trump without the special counsel's backing.

Ranger Bob needs to stop sweating cable news spin & letting the NYT/WP start fights which involve him.
The public can read his report & draw their own conclusions.

If Ranger Bob thought Trump should be impeached for obstruction, why didn't he just say so in his report ?
On obstruction -- Mueller punted.
If he thought Trump broke the law, say so (& if he were not POTUS, recommend he be indicted).
Marines & Rangers don't whine about context.

[dislaxxic]

The commentary we have about this letter is, so far, coming only from Barr aides. There is spin on the spin happening here it seems. Looks like The Con has his own Deep State operatives in play at this point...

..

[jhu72]

It should be pretty clear now to all that Barr has been properly characterized as a lying POS scum bag. There is no longer any doubt.

[dislaxxic]

Sorry for the long re-post, but this is behind the TPM paywall:

The Post and Times are both out with stories this evening revealing that just days after Bill Barr sent his exoneration Letter to Capitol Hill, Robert Mueller sent Barr a letter criticizing his handling of report, claimed he had inaccurately characterized its contents and was contributing to public confusion and lack of confidence in the outcome of the investigation.

We don’t have the letter itself, just a few quotes. Both reports are heavily weighted to Barr’s aides’ version of events. So the picture we have is limited, tendentious and as yet incomplete. But this passage from the letter, quoted in the Post, captures a lot.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 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. 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.”

The tone of the letter, indeed the existence of the letter itself, suggests a level of disagreement and antagonism that is belied by the formal nature of the writing. Mueller went on to argue that the summaries and introductions (which were apparently crafted without confidential material by design) should be released immediately and shouldn’t wait for the entire report to be redacted. Barr disagreed and stuck to his plan.

There are a few key points that emerge from these articles. One is that both rely heavily on descriptions and narrative details from Barr’s aides. This is particularly so in the Times. This includes claims that are really not credible on their face in terms of how these aides characterize Barr’s and their reactions at the time. This is in the nature of high level access journalism. Mueller’s side mainly isn’t talking, maybe isn’t talking at all. Barr’s side is talking and a lot. Claims that are not credible on their face get passed on without critical comment or analysis.

For instance the Post article contains this sentence. “Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns.” Given what we know of Barr’s letter and how much it contrasts with the actual report, this is simply not credible.

Another point is we start to get a sense of just why the Barr team was “irritated” by Mueller’s report. Since the Report was submitted in late March there’s been this on-going claim that Barr and his aides were irritated that Mueller chose to punt on his final conclusions, apparently leaving them no choice but to issue the President the blanket exoneration they speedily provided.

The Times actually includes a version of that set of claims …

Mr. Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr. Mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussions and another person briefed on the matter.

They expressed irritation that Mr. Mueller fell short of his assignment by declining to make a decision about whether Mr. Trump broke the law. That left Mr. Barr to clear Mr. Trump without the special counsel’s backing.

The senior department officials also found Mr. Mueller’s rationale for stopping short of deciding whether Mr. Trump committed a crime to be confusing and contradictory, and they concluded that Mr. Mueller’s report showed that there was no case against Mr. Trump.

But a few paragraphs down we get what sounds like the first attempt to pierce through this happy talk.

Mr. Mueller’s report, the attorney general and the other senior law enforcement officials believed, read like it had been written for consumption by Congress and the public, not like a confidential report to Mr. Barr, as required under the regulations governing the special counsel.

In other words, Barr wanted a simple explanation about prosecution decisions, the kind of confidential memo a prosecutor would provide to a supervisor. Such a report might reasonably be considered confidential. But that’s not what Mueller did. Indeed, it “read like it had been written for consumption by Congress and the public.”

Here’s where we get to the heart of the matter. Barr wanted a decision, one which almost certainly would be a decision against prosecution since that is longstanding DOJ policy. Mueller rather provided an overview of the evidence for Congress to evaluate. The Barr folks have been pretending like they were upset Mueller didn’t just decide for himself and left them to issue the President a blanket exoneration. But clearly that wasn’t really it. He gave them something written for Congress’s and the public’s review, thus significantly complicating Barr’s plan to cover the whole thing up. That obliged them to try to short-circuit the process by issuing a blanket exoneration.

In other words, the issue wasn’t that Mueller didn’t fulfill his charge. They were upset that Mueller’s team wrote a Report for Congress that Barr didn’t want written.

There’s quite a lot going on in this new part of the story. As I suggested above, Mueller pushing back like this is a big deal. We’ve been hearing for weeks that if what Barr was doing was so bad surely Mueller would have spoken up. Well, he did. But Barr kept that secret. It’s further worth pondering whether the Report would have been released at all if Mueller hadn’t pushed back as he did.

We shouldn’t miss what Mueller says in this letter, or at least the passage quoted by the Post. Though couched in cool, precise and formal language, Mueller says that Barr was willfully misleading the public about what the investigation had found. Indeed, by his actions he was sowing precisely the “confusion” and lack of public confidence that the appointment of a Special Counsel was supposed to prevent.

This is a damning development. Barr’s willful public deceptions are so evident that by any ordinary standard his resignation would be inevitable. Of course, we’re playing under Trump rules. So he’s not going anywhere. It is, nonetheless, a damning development.

..

[Chips O'Toole]

If Ranger Bob thought Trump should be impeached for obstruction, why didn't he just say so in his report ?

What an asinine question. You're truly the high school dunce spouting off in English class about a book he never cracked open.

[dislaxxic]

awww, he was using the sarcasm font, Chips. As usual. it's all an effort to deflect, mislead, propagandize and apologize for the behavior of Dear Leader.

You know, so the rubes in the (ever-dwindling) Trump Base (not including all those "moderates" just hoping he'll succeed, of course) will somehow still vote to keep him in office...

..

[MDlaxfan76]

If Ranger Bob thought Trump should be impeached for obstruction, why didn't he just say so in his report ?

What an asinine question. You're truly the high school dunce spouting off in English class about a book he never cracked open.

I had the same reaction.
Puzzling, though, as I don't get the impression that Salty is actually stupid. But he sure makes some dumb cracks.

He opens with making fun of "context":

.. ...did not fully capture the context ? The entire friggin report is available for everyone to read.

Really, really dumb statement. Barr's 4-pager was the 24th, Mueller's letter was the 27th. Barr didn't make the report available, in any form, until many weeks later. Still hasn't provided Congress with the full report.

And ends with:

Marines & Rangers don't whine about context.

Context, nature, and substance.

Whether Barr committed perjury, technically, is an open question. But there's zero doubt that he not only misrepresented Mueller's findings and conclusions, he misrepresented on direct questioning by congress whether he knew there was disagreement with Mueller over his (Barr's) misrepresentations. These were not simple misunderstandings, they were gross, willful misrepresentations.

Now he doesn't want to be questioned by the House Judiciary's staff counsel. And, boo hoo, Salty and crew are claiming he's being subjected to something unreasonable.

I'll take the Marine.

[dislaxxic]

I had the same reaction.
Puzzling, though, as I don't get the impression that Salty is actually stupid. But he sure makes some dumb cracks.

It's called "trolling"

Trump conservatives live by it lately (and may well die politically, by it)

..

[dislaxxic]

More from Josh Marshall at TPM: [premium paywall]

Before we get underway with the Barr hearing at 10 a.m. ET, let me quickly highlight one of the most troubling and misleading aspects of Barr’s public justification for his handling of the Mueller report.

Barr has stood firm on the premise that he did not block or deny Mueller in any way. In his prepared remarks for today’s hearing for instance, he declares: “As I informed Congress on March 22, 2019, at no point did I, or anyone at the Department of Justice, overrule the Special Counsel on any proposed action.”

But we know this is simply not true. By making a prosecutorial decision on the obstruction case against President Trump, Barr fundamentally overruled Mueller on the essential question of whether a prosecutorial decision should be made at all. It is as consequential a decision as Barr could have possibly made under the circumstances. And in doing so, as I’ve said before, he wrested power away from the special counsel, from future prosecutors who might look to prosecute Trump post-presidency, and from Congress.

Barr showed baldfaced mendacity in declaring that he didn’t deny Mueller anything while actually denying Mueller his entire approach to laying out the obstruction of justice case. Mueller’s rationale for not reaching a conclusion on obstruction was not the only way to approach the issue, but it was consistent with DOJ guidelines and was made in good faith. It was a core feature of the report and of Mueller’s entire approach to the investigation.

Barr overruled him on that, using a legal reasoning that he has yet to publicly explain. Mueller’s approach did not by default leave it to the attorney general to decide. Barr took that upon himself, and he continues not only to deny that he did so, but to seek credit for leaving Mueller alone. It’s preposterous.

..

[old salt]

.. ...did not fully capture the context ? The entire friggin report is available for everyone to read.

from NYT bombshell :
Mr Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr Mueller ended his investigation and crafted his report. They expressed irritation that Mr Mueller fell short of his assignment by declining to make a decision about whether Mt Trump broke the law. That left Mr Barr to clear Mr Trump without the special counsel's backing.

Ranger Bob needs to stop sweating cable news spin & letting the NYT/WP start fights which involve him.
The public can read his report & draw their own conclusions.

If Ranger Bob thought Trump should be impeached for obstruction, why didn't he just say so in his report ?
On obstruction -- Mueller punted.
If he thought Trump broke the law, say so (& if he were not POTUS, recommend he be indicted).
Marines & Rangers don't whine about context.

@AndrewCMcCarthy
So he wasn’t saying the letter was inaccurate, but was worried about media coverage and whether his narrative would dictate it. Story of the whole investigation. We can read the report ... the rest is diva noise.

..

[old salt]

more from Andy McCarthy :

This complaint was set forth in Mueller’s own letter, dated March 27. The letter is a microcosm of Mueller’s collusion probe: sound and fury, signifying nothing; an investigative process predicated on no criminal conduct, which generated crimes rather than solving one.

Mueller is precisely not saying that Barr misrepresented his key findings. He is saying that he and the Clinton/Obama minions he recruited to staff the case wrote the report with a certain mood music in mind. To their chagrin, Barr gave us just the no-crime bottom line. Mueller would have preferred for us to feel all the ooze of un-presidential escapades he couldn’t indict but wouldn’t, from his lofty perch, “exonerate.”

The purportedly private letter to Barr, like Mueller’s purportedly confidential report, was patently meant for public consumption, and thus leaked to the Post late yesterday. The timing is transparently strategic: the leak drops a bomb as Barr was preparing for two days of what promises to be combative congressional hearings, starting this morning; it gives maximum media exposure to Mueller’s diva routine and its Democratic chorus, while the attorney general gets minimal time to respond to asinine cries of that he should be charged with perjury, held in contempt, and – of course – impeached.

The Post’s reporters say they were permitted to “review” the letter yesterday. This phrasing implies that they were not permitted to keep a copy – i.e., no fingerprints on this leak of a close-hold document. Keep that in mind next time you read one of those hagiographies about ramrod straight Bob Mueller who never plays these Washington games, no siree.

The Democrats’ perjury/contempt/impeachment slander against Barr is based on the fact that, in prior congressional testimony, Barr was asked whether Mueller agreed with Barr’s conclusions about the report, including that there was insufficient evidence to charge obstruction.
But Mueller’s letter doesn’t say he disagreed with Barr’s conclusion – it says he was unhappy with how his work was being perceived by the public.

Barr and Mueller spoke by phone the day after Mueller sent his letter. If you wade through the first 13 paragraphs of the Post’s story, you finally find the bottom line:

"When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said."

So even Mueller conceded, through gritted teeth, that Barr’s letter was accurate. The diva was just worried about the media coverage.

No surprise there. Barr’s letter conveyed that Mueller had failed to render a prosecutorial judgment on the only question a special counsel was arguably needed to decide: Was there enough evidence to charge President Trump with obstruction, or should prosecution be declined?

On collusion, Mueller’s report had conveyed what everyone already knew from the indictments Mueller had previously filed, and what Mueller himself must have known very soon after taking over the probe in May 2017: There was no case.

Plainly, this was an obstruction investigation...
Under the circumstances, Mueller’s main job was to answer the obstruction question. He abdicated. Barr’s letter made that obvious. The press coverage elucidated it. This made Mueller very unhappy. So he wrote a letter whining about “context.”

Of course, context is not a prosecutor’s job. That is the stuff of political narratives.

Mueller was not effectively supervised. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein allowed him to get into the political narrative business – just as he allowed the special counsel to persist in the collusion investigation for over a year after it was clear that there was no collusion case.

Without supervision, Mueller’s staff continued weaving a tale rather than acknowledging that they had not found a crime.

No collusion charges, no espionage conspiracy evidence … just enough intrigue to keep a soap opera rolling along.

It is not a prosecutor’s job, under the pretext of “context,” to taint people by publicizing non-criminal conduct. If the investigative subject has committed no offense, the public is customarily told nothing. If a defendant is charged with a relatively minor offense, the indictment is supposed to reflect that.

You are supposed to see the crime for what it is, not view it through the prism of the prosecutor’s big ambitions. If all George Papadopoulos did was fib about when a meeting happened, the function of an indictment is to put him on notice of that charge; it is not to weave a heroic tale of how hard the prosecutor tried to find collusion with a hostile foreign power.

Mueller was annoyed because Barr’s report showed Mueller didn’t do the job he was retained to do, and omitted all the narrative-writing that Mueller preferred to do.

Before Attorney General Barr issued his letter outlining the special counsel’s conclusions, Mueller was invited to review it for accuracy. Mueller declined. After Barr explained that Mueller had not decided the obstruction question, the press reported on this dereliction. Mueller is miffed about the press coverage … but he can’t say Barr misrepresented his findings.

Like the Mueller investigation, this episode is designed to fuel a political narrative. But we don’t need a narrative – we don’t even need anyone to explain the report plainly. That’s because we now have the report. We can read it for ourselves. The rest is noise.

[dislaxxic]

More VRWC. McCarthy's words parrot the spin being pushed out about this by Barr staffers and other DoJ Trumpist Deep Staters. The characterizations of the Letter being reported in the Post and the NYT are all based on DoJ staff characterizations when confronted about the Letter by reporters.

Same way Barr distorted the Report, it appears that he and his underlings are now attempting to distort what this Letter is all about.

As in the first instance, this second instance is liable to bite their fat butts hard...

..

[old salt]

.. ...from the guy who pays for & quotes Talking Points Memo.

[dislaxxic]

Yep, our world is just spinning merrily through space...just depends what ring you want to spin on, Teacup...

..