Report: Mueller investigators wrote summaries they assumed would be made public
When Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possibility of President Trump obstructing justice, it was prepared so every section had its own summary, with the belief each would be made available to the public, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
With that in mind, some members of the Mueller team have told associates they are frustrated with Attorney General William Barr sending a four-page letter to Congress that summarized the report in his own words. "There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead," the official told the Post, adding that Mueller's office prepared their summaries in "a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself."
Barr's letter said Mueller did not establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia's government, and also didn't reach a conclusion on obstruction. The investigators found the obstruction evidence, however, to be "alarming and significant," the Post reports, with one person telling the paper "it was much more acute than Barr suggested." The New York Times first reported about the frustration felt by some investigators.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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