The Mueller team has now issued a statement that Barr ‘didn’t completely capture the spirit of the report’.
Last Thursday was a day Donald Trump would like to forget. First, there were murmurings in the press from the Mueller team that their report was not entirely accurately reflected by Attorney General (AG) William Barr. This was followed by claims that the White House had over-ruled objections to the granting of a security clearance to the presidential son-in-law, Jared Kushner. A frustrated Congress committee then subpoenaed the full un-redacted Mueller report from the AG’s office. To cap the day, the House Democrats finally demanded President Trump’s tax returns for the past six years.
Democrats have always been concerned that the AG, a man specially picked by the President, would fail to issue a balanced and accurate summary of the 22-month long investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller team has now issued a statement that Barr “didn’t completely capture the spirit of the report”. Their findings were prepared so that the front matter from each section could be released immediately. But Barr, it is claimed, completely ignored this information, preferring his own interpretation.
Those who have followed Mueller’s investigation closely are unlikely to be surprised by William Barr’s statement that he didn’t personally believe that Trump obstructed justice. Only last year, just before he was nominated by Trump to be AG, Barr wrote a lengthy memo, shared with the President’s team, in which he challenged the legitimacy of Mueller’s obstruction inquiry. Is it possible that this contributed to his selection for the job?
There is a deep suspicion that Barr’s strategy was to create the first narrative of Mueller’s findings, in the hope that Americans’ views will harden before the genuine conclusions become public. Immediately, a number of Trump acolytes, including Fox News, were quick to grasp the AG’s summary to flood the media with stories intended to rubbish the investigation. This ploy may well succeed. President Trump, who initially said he was in favour of the report being issued un-redacted, has changed his mind and now insists that the matter is settled; “we should put it behind us and move on”.
In an attempt to shed light on the matter, the US House Judiciary Committee voted to subpoena the full, un-redacted 400-page report from the AG’s office after he had missed their deadline for publication. The scene is set for a titanic battle between the House and the AG’s department.
American opinion is divided along partisan lines, according to a recent poll by the Washington Post. When asked if they thought Trump committed a crime, 65% of Democrats answered “yes”, with 71% agreeing that he committed a serious wrongdoing. Among Republicans, the figures were 12% and 15% respectively. Those who declared themselves Independent were divided 50% in each case. In the case of Trump’s claim that he was “completely exonerated” by Mueller, 61% of Americans believe Mueller and only 32% believe Trump. The important conclusion for Donald Trump is that 51% of Americans state that Mueller’s finding make no difference to their voting intentions in 2020; this compares with 30% who say they are less likely to vote for him. Expect these figures to change radically if and when the full Mueller report is published.
For some time there has been a mystery surrounding 25 White House officials who were initially denied security clearances over concerns of “foreign influence”. These included “two current senior officials in the Executive office of the President”, one of whom is now known to be Trump’s son-in-law. The ban was lifted by the White House on Thursday. The New York Times reported that President Trump ordered officials to grant Kushner a clearance over the objections of national security officials. Washington “agencies” are said to be concerned.
The event of the week, which is probably of greatest concern to President Trump, is the letter from the House Ways and Means Committee to the Inland Revenue Service (IRS), requesting personal Trump’s tax returns from 2013 to 2018. Eight of his business entities are also now under the spotlight of the IRS. When challenged about being involved in politics, a spokesman insisted that the policy of the IRS has always been to audit the returns of sitting Presidents and Vice Presidents.
Those with long memories will recall that Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns in the 2016 campaign, breaking with nearly a 40-year precedent set by former presidential candidates. Democrats asked the question, “why”. What is he hiding? Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer”, Michael Cohen, suggested during his testimony before Capitol Hill that his former boss didn’t wish to release his tax returns because the ensuing scrutiny would force him to incur tax penalties. He also alleged that Trump inflated his assets to banks and insurance companies, implicating him in tax and insurance fraud. House Democrats are openly raising the question of whether the President has violated the US Constitution by receiving benefits from foreign countries without congressional approval. They also want to know if the President’s financial interests affect his public decision-making.
This year could be a decisive year in the Trump presidency. He is now challenged by events of almost Shakespearian dimensions. He will probably survive until the end of his first term, but the odds against his re-election must be increasing.
John Dobson worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s Office between 1995 and 1998 and is presently Chairman of the Plymouth University of the Third Age.