Barring The Truth

Attorney General William Barr’s memo that summarized the “principal conclusions” of the Mueller report, but which Barr subsequently and curiously claimed was not a summary, actually raised more questions than it answered. The thrust of that summary was apparently so deceptive that members of the normally tight-lipped Mueller team felt compelled to leak that their actual report was far more damaging than Barr let on. Of course, Barr’s memo did allow Trump to proclaim complete “exoneration”, despite Barr’s memo explicitly saying that was not the case.

I expect that what parts of the Mueller report that Barr actually releases on Thursday will also raise more questions than it answers, primarily because of his redactions. That will be especially true when it comes to details about the potential conspiracy that Mueller never charged. That area will probably involve both significant national security redactions and redactions related to ongoing investigations.

Those ongoing investigations appear to cover critical incidents that many have taken to be substantial evidence of collusion, if not indictable conspiracy. Probably the most important of these is Paul Manafort’s meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik where he passed the Trump campaign’s internal polling data to the known representative of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The obvious questions are what did Manafort think the Russians were going to do with that data and why they would want the data in the first place. The obvious answers to both would point to some kind of conspiracy but that was not charged by Mueller. Manafort’s lies about that meeting was described by a Mueller prosecutor as going to “the heart of what the Special Counsel is investigating”.

Yesterday, the government once again refused the Washington Post’s request to release the entire transcript of Manafort’s plea agreement which covered his lies about this particular meeting but was heavily redacted. The government claimed that the redacted material still covered ongoing investigations which essentially means that the investigation into this meeting continues, but it is not being handled by Mueller. That also means that any information or conclusions about this meeting in the Mueller report will surely be redacted as well.

Similarly, Roger Stone is awaiting trial in November about the lies he told about his interactions with Trump campaign concerning Wikileaks. Voluminous amounts of material were seized from Roger Stone’s residences when he was arrested, some of which has the potential to add more detail to what exactly Stone was up to with Wikileaks on behalf of the Trump campaign. We do know that at least one senior member of the Trump campaign sent a “well done” email to Stone after a particular Wikileaks dump in early October, 2016. Once again, these interactions point to some sort of conspiracy not charged. And once again, any information about Stone’s interaction with the Trump campaign regarding Wikileaks in what Barr releases will certainly be redacted as part of on ongoing investigation.

Rick Gates is also awaiting sentencing regarding his actions during the campaign and is currently aiding several ongoing investigations. Those investigations may cover the Manafort-Kilimnik meeting and the massive corruption in the Trump inauguration fund. So, again, any information that Gates has about either of those areas of interest will be redacted.

Mike Flynn is also awaiting sentencing and is expected to testify against a former business partner later this year. That may allow Barr to redact any of the information he might have given Mueller about the illicit communications that he and Jared Kushner were engaging in with the Russians along with the promise to lift the sanctions that Obama imposed in return for what K.T. McFarland said was the fact that Russia had just “thrown the U.S.A. election” to Trump, yet another potential conspiracy not charged.

When Robert Mueller was farming out these cases to  other jurisdictions, it was seen as a way for him to protect the Russia investigation in case his investigation was prematurely terminated by the President. As one former federal prosecutor stated, “Robert Mueller has created an army of acolytes and those soldiers are now embedded in the Justice Department” who will carry on his investigation.

In some ways that is true, in that those investigations will continue even though Mueller has finished. Of course, that makes the ending of the Mueller investigation even more curious. As former prosecutor Joyce White Vance notes, “numerous cases are still in progress & prosecutors know you don’t know what crimes you will & won’t be able to prove until you’ve worked through everything”. If there is still potential evidence our there, then why did Mueller shut down.

One possible explanation is that, rather than protecting his investigation, Mueller was being restricted in what cases he could actually bring. That is at least hinted at in Barr’s memo, which limited Trump’s exoneration on conspiracy to actions with the Internet Research Agency and the Russian government, potentially excluding coordination with numerous Russian oligarchs and cutouts.

Whatever the reason, at the moment, the farming out of various investigations into other jurisdictions  means that the whatever we see of the Mueller report will be incomplete. And other potential damaging information about a potential conspiracy, rather than being revealed at once, will come dribbling out as these cases conclude over the coming months and even years. And that assumes that the redacted material will be released after those cases conclude. By then, unless Congress intervenes and obtains and releases the entire report, the narrative will have already been set and Trump will simply regurgitate his interpretation of the Barr memo. The cover-up will be nearly complete.