Most Important Take-Aways from AG Barr's Testimony This Morning

The Democrats interrogated him harshly. He gave no f***s, informants inform me.

Among the most important points:

1, he will release the report after redactions have been made in about a week.

2, he refused Democrats' whining that they should get a special, illegal unredacted version of the report that they could selectively leak to their many, many media allies and in-kind donors.

When Democrats insisted that the law provided some wiggle-room to release secret grand jury testimony to Congress, he scoffed and asked, "Where?" As in, "point me to where the law says this, hacks."

3, when Democrats whined that he had only provided a "summary" of a 400 page report, he said he did not in fact release a summary of a report, but a digest of its legal conclusions. And the conclusions were: No collusion, and no case made for obstruction.

4, he dismissed the Democrats' whining about the full report by noting that Mueller Had One Job, which was a "binary job" to either bring charges or to not bring charges, and he had not brought charges against the president or anyone else for collusion or obstruction. This is a not-too-subtle dig at the idea of "talking indictment," where a prosecutor does not bring charges and yet uses his position to suggest various crimes that maybe coulda been charged to besmirch a man who is, not just by judicial tradition but by the prosecutor's own determination, innocent of any crime. He's crapping on the Democrats' idea that even though the topline conclusion is "no collusion and no chargeable obstruction" that they can sift through the report for whispers and hints of possible crimes Too Awful To Contemplate.

5, when Democrats whined that there's no way that a human could read 300-400 pages of a report (much of which was merely transcripts of testimony which can be skimmed) in a few days, he rebutted that he already knew the general contours of the report because he had been given a preliminary briefing on the findings of no collusion, no obstruction on March 5th.

Note that there was some walking back of the media from its more outre conspiracy theories starting near this time. This is also about the time-frame I think I remember certain fake conservatives declaring, out of the blue, that they had been "collusion skeptics" all along.

Some more stuff:

He says the IG report on FISA abuse will also soon conclude, as soon as May or June. I saw a report, whose URL I can't find, claiming that he also suggested that he himself would be doing his own investigation, or at least review, of this case.

When Democrats whined that they just didn't believe Barr's statement of conclusions and wanted to hear from Mueller, Barr responded that Mueller was offered the chance to review Barr's letter digesting the conclusions, but passed on the chance.

"The letter of the 24th [of March], Mr. Mueller's team did not play a role in drafting that document, although we offered him the opportunity to review it before we sent it out, and he declined that," Barr said in testimony to a House Appropriations Committee.

So apparently Mueller does not share the fear that Democrats and NeverTrumpers do that Barr is just making everything up in his summary of conclusions.

For some reason, Michigan Democrat Representative Brenda Lawrence told AG Barr to, get this, "stay woke."

Full video of the hearing here.

posted by Ace of Spades at 03:51 PM

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