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Whatever portions of Robert Mueller's post-redacted report finally get released to the public in the coming week, they will not amount to the "complete and total exoneration" Donald Trump repeatedly promised they would. Even Attorney General William Barr's swiss-cheese release of Mueller’s findings won't be as glowing as Trump gloated about publicly because you can't add the word "exonerated" where it doesn't exist. Trump is clearly beginning to realize that, even if Barr can redact tons of damaging information, he can't invent material that wasn't actually there to begin with. That's exactly why Barr did invent his own four-page exoneration of Trump even after Mueller wrote that his own report "does not exonerate" Trump.
Predictably, Trump has now extended his 180-degree turnaround from last week on releasing Mueller’s report to deriding Mueller and his team, right on schedule.
"Looks like Bob Mueller’s team of 13 Trump Haters & Angry Democrats are illegally leaking information to the press," Trump tweeted Sunday, taking aim at Muller's team after headlines emerged that their report figures much worse for Trump than Barr's original summary made it seem. Trump's chief propagandist on Russia, Rudy Giuliani, is also zealously retracting Trump's original claim that Mueller had acted honorably.
“You’re darn right I’m going after them again,” Giuliani told the Associated Press of Mueller’s team. “I never thought they did their job in a professional manner. ... Only because there is overwhelming evidence that the president didn’t do anything wrong, they were forced to admit they couldn’t find anything on him. They sure tried.” (Note: the public record is full of information showing that Trump engaged in wrongdoing in plain sight.)
The maligning of Mueller will certainly intensify over the coming days. Just look at what White House ally Richard Burr, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the AP about Mueller's report.
“I personally believe not all of it is going to be great for the White House,” Burr said. While Burr said he didn't know exactly what's in the report, he added, “but there are going to be things that maybe cause some people to say, ‘Oh, gosh, I didn’t know that existed.’"
Sounds like even Senate Intel found some not-so-flattering information about Trump.