25th March 2019, 12:02 AM
Yeah, the report summary is moderately good news for Trump, but from what little it admits, they're wildly exaggerating when they claim 'complete exoneration' and such. This NY Times op-ed summarizes some of the problems with Barr's report well: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/opini...eport.html Mueller apparently decided that he didn't have enough evidence to charge Trump with collusion, but that there was evidence going both ways on obstruction of justice. Barr then decided that that meant that Trump was innocent of obstruction as well, even though that is definitely not what it sounds like Mueller was saying. And the Mueller investigation was very narrowly focused, too much so to cover all of Trump's numerous crimes.
Unfortunately the media, as you say, seem to be quite willing to believe Barr's probably very overly friendly portrayal of the report. I hope that a lot more of it gets out soon so we get a fuller picture, though Barr probably isn't just totally making up what he says in that report; he must know a good amount of the real report will be released, after all. The question is how complete the report was, what is actually included in the final report, and such. For instance, was anything related to the President himself left out because of the Justice Department's "the president cannot be charged" interpretation of the law? That is a very plausible scenario unfortunately. It does seem pretty clear that Mueller missed his chance to really take down Trump, but he probably never wanted to do that to begin with, so that's understandable if that is what the report says. (I never was a believer in the whole 'Mueller will save America from Trump' narrative some people wanted to convince themselves...)
What this really means is that future investigations will be much more partisan than Mueller's were, but no matter what Mueller found the Republican Party was almost certainly not going to support impeachment, so that was going that direction anyway.
Also, given this mixed-result report, it's probably good that it was released now and not in the middle of the next Presidential campaign, that'd be much better for Trump then... unless of course more details leak from it that are very damaging to him, which is possible of course.
Unfortunately the media, as you say, seem to be quite willing to believe Barr's probably very overly friendly portrayal of the report. I hope that a lot more of it gets out soon so we get a fuller picture, though Barr probably isn't just totally making up what he says in that report; he must know a good amount of the real report will be released, after all. The question is how complete the report was, what is actually included in the final report, and such. For instance, was anything related to the President himself left out because of the Justice Department's "the president cannot be charged" interpretation of the law? That is a very plausible scenario unfortunately. It does seem pretty clear that Mueller missed his chance to really take down Trump, but he probably never wanted to do that to begin with, so that's understandable if that is what the report says. (I never was a believer in the whole 'Mueller will save America from Trump' narrative some people wanted to convince themselves...)
What this really means is that future investigations will be much more partisan than Mueller's were, but no matter what Mueller found the Republican Party was almost certainly not going to support impeachment, so that was going that direction anyway.
Also, given this mixed-result report, it's probably good that it was released now and not in the middle of the next Presidential campaign, that'd be much better for Trump then... unless of course more details leak from it that are very damaging to him, which is possible of course.