Mueller’s main job was to answer the obstruction question. He abdicated. Barr’s letter made that obvious. The press coverage elucidated it. This made Mueller very unhappy. So he wrote a letter whining about “context.”
Of course, context is not a prosecutor’s job. That is the stuff of political narratives.
Mueller was not effectively supervised. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein allowed him to get into the political narrative business – just as he allowed the special counsel to persist in the collusion investigation for over a year after it was clear that there was no collusion case.
Without supervision, Mueller’s staff continued weaving a tale rather than acknowledging that they had not found a crime. For example, the allegation against George Papadopoulos – namely, that he lied about the date of a meeting – could have been charged in a single paragraph. Instead, the charge is accompanied by Mueller’s 14-page “statement of the offense,” which is not a statement of the false-statement offense at all – it is a lot of huffing and puffing about almost-but-not-really collusion.
The Michael Flynn false-statements charge similarly comes with a script about unremarkable discussions between an incoming national security advisor and Russian counterpart that are portrayed as almost-not-quite-collusion.
The Roger Stone indictment for still more process crimes – i.e., crimes the investigation caused rather than examined – is a 20-page epic of “something around here sure smells like collusion.”
No collusion charges, no espionage conspiracy evidence … just enough intrigue to keep a soap opera rolling along.
It is not a prosecutor’s job, under the pretext of “context,” to taint people by publicizing non-criminal conduct. If the investigative subject has committed no offense, the public is customarily told nothing. If a defendant is charged with a relatively minor offense, the indictment is supposed to reflect that.
You are supposed to see the crime for what it is, not view it through the prism of the prosecutor’s big ambitions. If all George Papadopoulos did was fib about when a meeting happened, the function of an indictment is to put him on notice of that charge; it is not to weave a heroic tale of how hard the prosecutor tried to find collusion with a hostile foreign power.
Mueller was annoyed because Barr’s report showed Mueller didn’t do the job he was retained to do, and omitted all the narrative-writing that Mueller preferred to do.
Before Attorney General Barr issued his letter outlining the special counsel’s conclusions, Mueller was invited to review it for accuracy. Mueller declined. After Barr explained that Mueller had not decided the obstruction question, the press reported on this dereliction. Mueller is miffed about the press coverage … but he can’t say Barr misrepresented his findings.
Like the Mueller investigation, this episode is designed to fuel a political narrative. But we don’t need a narrative – we don’t even need anyone to explain the report plainly. That’s because we now have the report. We can read it for ourselves. The rest is noise.
Mueller's letter to Barr - You're letter is accurate, but where's my mood music?
