After Attorney General William Barr's summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report was released on Sunday, MSNBC's Ari Melber noticed something interesting.
"This is four pages and there's not a single full sentence in here that's quoted the Mueller report," he said. "Every quote from the Mueller report itself is a partial sentence." Many of those partial sentences, like the one saying it was not established that "members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," are "quite important," Melber said, but it's "really striking that Barr basically said, 'I'm going to do this through the weekend. Mueller spent 22 months on it. I can do it in under 48 hours, and go beyond the Mueller report's findings.'"
Barr, Melber said, is "relaying one finding on no election collusion/conspiracy. That's big, and then he's going beyond the other finding that there is evidence of obstruction. The president is not exonerated, but he's also not accused of a crime, and the House is where that would usually be dealt with." The House, he continued, is "kind of being muscled out in an attempt by the new attorney general to say, 'I'm gonna issue my own conclusion on that,' and he's dong that with these four partial sentences."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It doesn't take a lawyer or a Washington insider to start wondering if "these four sentences, partial, are the very best [Barr] could find in the entire Mueller report about Donald Trump, and they are what's in the early letter," Melber said. Watch the clip below. Catherine Garcia
-
Political cartoons for October 21Cartoons Tuesday’s political cartoons include a high-profile theft, Epstein files keeping Donald Trump up at night, Halloween costumes and scary GOP stories
-
Five things we learnt from Virginia Giuffre’s memoirThe Explainer Nobody’s Girl recounts ‘harrowing’ details of Giuffre’s suffering as a teenage victim of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle
-
Prince Andrew: a timeline of disgraced royal’s Epstein scandalIn Depth How the Queen’s favourite child went from Falklands War hero to public pariah
-
Hungary’s Krasznahorkai wins Nobel for literatureSpeed Read László Krasznahorkai is the author of acclaimed novels like ‘The Melancholy of Resistance’ and ‘Satantango’
-
Primatologist Jane Goodall dies at 91Speed Read She rose to fame following her groundbreaking field research with chimpanzees
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talkSpeed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
