Rachel Maddow took apart the news in a late-breaking New York Times article on Wednesday night, news noting that the investigators on Robert Mueller’s team, for the first time since the beginning of this investigation, are beginning to “squawk” (as Maddow puts) it, because they are unhappy with how Attorney Bill Barr has characterized their findings.
The meat of the Mueller news: “Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.”
Said Maddow: “What the Times is reporting based on what appears to be current government officials, justice Department sources, is that Mueller and his team prepared their own summaries of their findings, Mueller’s team is angry that those summaries were not released to the public by Barr and instead he released his own, which was much nicer to Trump. But Mueller is also involved in deciding what can and can’t be released from his report, and his summaries were written in such a way that they definitely can’t be released to the public or to Congress? Something just doesn’t add up here.
“When’s the last time over this whole two year process that you remembered seeing reporting that sourced to Mueller’s investigators,” Maddow asked. “Mueller’s investigators say, Mueller’s investigators have told.” When’s the last time you saw reporting like that? You haven’t seen reporting like that before.”
“One of the other implications is that whatever William Barr is trying to do with Mueller’s report appears to be rubbing Robert Mueller and his team the wrong way,” Maddow continued, “and for the first time in this whole two year process they appear to be willing to squawk, to make some public noise, to make sure their findings are not abused, or mischaracterized, or submarined. Maybe there will be now, a new voice in this process, from Mueller and his team themselves.
Neal Katyal, former acting-U.S. solicitor general, joined Maddow for analysis.
