I thought Mark Sumner's Diary yesterday (based on WaPo reporting) about Barr forcing an end to Mueller’s investigation was SPOT ON! The seemingly abrupt end to the Mueller probe coinciding with Barr coming on board deserves a lot more scrutiny by the media than it is getting.
This report only confirms my earlier suspicions that something was not right about the timing of Mueller’s conclusionary report as I expressed in my March 29 Comment, excerpts of which are re-posted below:
I am not a conspiracy theorist or one who believes that anyone with an “R” after his/her name is corrupt, corruptible and can’t be trusted. But I keep having this feeling deep down in my gut that something isn’t right about how this Mueller investigation is ending. Here are just a few things that are perplexing me.
Just before Barr came onboard, Mueller had requested that the term of the Grand Jury he empaneled be extended another 6 months until June. But reports are that the Grand Jury has not been convened since Barr took over, and now that Mueller has filed his report, all indications are that the Grand Jury’s work is done with no further indictments. So why ask for an extension of a Grand Jury’s term, then a few weeks later decide not to convene said Jury during its extended term?
We later learned through Court filings in a Reporter’s Group FOIA request to reveal the name of the Company in Mueller’s Mystery Case, that the Mueller Grand Jury was “robustly continuing” their investigation. However, now its continuing not with the independent Mueller team, but with a team of Barr’s prosecutors within the DoJ.
Similarly, it was just a week or two ago that Rick Gates’ lawyers and Mueller’s prosecutors filed a joint statement to the Court asking that Gates’ sentencing be delayed at least another 60 days as his cooperation with the Government’s investigation was still not complete. Yet, now that Barr has taken over, Mueller is ending his investigation. So why did Mueller ask the court to give him another 60 days with Gates?
Mueller was still in the middle of enforcing the Grand Jury’s subpoena to obtain documents from an unknown Foreign company. In fact, on Friday SCOTUS was meeting to decide whether to hear the case. So why is Mueller turning this case over to other DoJ lawyers at this arbitrary point in an ongoing case? And why would you issue a final report on your investigation while you’re still trying to get documentary evidence?
Only a few weeks back, just before Barr came onboard, Mueller requested and received Congressional transcripts of Don Jr. (and others) testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Testimony that Adam Schiff has divulged almost certainly demonstrates that Don Jr. lied before Congress, based on other information known to the Committee. So now that Barr is in charge, Mueller is ending his investigation without indicting Don Jr. of the crime of lying to Congress, a crime that he previously indicted Cohen and others for?
I am sure there are more perplexing questions that I will think of later. But what they all leave me to wonder is if Barr has talked Mueller into prematurely wrapping things up using a “for the good of the Country” argument. After All they are friends.
He could have convinced Mueller that there is not enough evidence for further indictments, that he has already achieved his investigatory mandate within the scope he was given, that further investigation could dangerously further divide the Country and that he (Barr) will have other lawyers within the DoJ pick up and complete Mueller’s ongoing cases (DoJ lawyers under Barr’s direct control of course).
Now we have Barr’s letter to Congress “summarizing” Mueller’s findings. In it he says Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Russia and the Trump Campaign to influence the 2016 election. Does that mean he found no evidence of such a conspiracy or that he decided there was insufficient evidence to convict alleged conspirators in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt. There is a significant difference of course.
Further, Barr’s letter states that Mueller was not able to determine if Trump committed obstruction of justice. However, after supposedly only about 48 hours with the Mueller Report, he and Rosenstein determined that Trump did not obstruct Justice.
For me, Barr’s letter only further heightens my suspicions that Barr persuaded Mueller to end his investigation and turn over all unfinished legal business to other DoJ lawyers under Barr’s direct control.
Now the evidence seems to be trickling in that my earlier suspicions were correct.
Further evidence that Barr terminated the investigation lies within the Mueller Report itself, some subtle and some not so subtle.
The report lists 14 presently ongoing cases related to Mueller’s investigation, 12 of which we have no idea what they are about. It seems to me to be out of character for Mueller to just drop his work on these ongoing cases totally voluntarily when Barr came on. He has always been an investigator who chases down every lead and sees his cases to conclusion. So why would he voluntarily take these cases away from his independent team of Special Prosecutors and turn them over to Barr’s team of DoJ Prosecutors? You were specifically given the task of conducting an investigation INDEPENDENT of direct DoJ control, so why would you VOLUNTARILY turn it back over to a partisan AG before completing all aspects of what started out as an independent investigation?
Also, the report provides some subtle hints in the way it is written which (IMO) suggest that Mueller’s investigation was prematurely terminated. As I am reading through the report, I have noticed a number of instances where paragraphs layout evidence of a criminal act, then abruptly end with a “but” sentence saying that they were unable to establish sufficient evidence of a crime. In each of these instances, he seems to be building a case, and then the “but” sentence seems to terminate that case before all avenues of evidence gathering are exhausted. Why?
Also, why would Mueller VOLUNTARILY decide to not subpoena obvious key players in the Trump Crime Family? For instance, why not bring Don Jr. in under oath and ask him what went in in the Trump Tower meeting? Mueller has always been a tough prosecutor not afraid of a fight, but yet here we are supposed to believe that he backed away from several subpoena fights.
So here is my key questions to Mueller that I pray someone will ask him when he testifies before Congress:
1. When did you and your team first decide to wrap things up and write your final report (please provide a specific date)?
2. Why did you decide to wrap things up now?
3. Were there any other individuals outside of your team who were involved in discussions about wrapping up the Special Counsel’s investigation? If so, who were they?
IMO, something definitely smells about the timing of Mueller’s Report that deserves looking into. Why do I get the feeling that Barr is a willing participant, if not the orchestrator of a coverup?