Aaron Blake writes:

Attorney General William P. Barr appeared before Congress on Wednesday having been accused of misleading about and pre-spinning the Mueller report for President Trump. He also came on the heels of a newly reported letter in which Robert S. Mueller III rebuked Barr’s handling of the matter.

So it should come as no surprise that he misled about and spun Mueller’s letter, too. The difference this time was that he accidentally gave away his game.

From the start of the hearing, Barr emphasized two talking points about the letter:

1. That Mueller later told him nothing was inaccurate in Barr’s summary of the Mueller report’s principal conclusions
2. That Mueller was concerned about news coverage

“I asked him if he was suggesting that the March 24 letter was inaccurate, and he said no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate,” Barr said at one point. He emphasized at another point that he asked Mueller whether the letter was inaccurate. “He indicated that it was not,” Barr said. “He was not saying that and that what he was concerned about” were news reports.

The suggestion is that Mueller wasn’t really upset with Barr at all but was, instead, angry with how the media was handling the matter.

But Mueller’s letter paints a very different picture. It places the onus for misperceptions of his report squarely on Barr. [Continue reading…]