Former Mueller Prosecutor Suggests Mueller Report Is Bad For Trump
After Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress attempting to summarize the key findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report, President Donald Trump took what many characterized as a “victory lap,” claiming that he was exonerated from any claims of wrongdoing.
“No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION,” Trump wrote in a tweet from mid-March.
No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2019
Yet in the past week, members of Mueller’s investigative team have begun to leak to the press their misgivings with Barr’s letter, and the idea that the president was cleared of any wrongdoing. Among the many qualms they had with the letter, some investigators have suggested that the attorney general didn’t properly characterize how the 2016 Trump campaign had been manipulated by “a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation.”
As the leaks begin to “drip” out from Mueller’s team, one former prosecutor who previously worked with Mueller says it’s quite revealing how investigators, once so very tight-lipped about the whole matter, are now suddenly willing to break their silence to contradict Barr and Trump’s assertions.
“There was a closed universe during the investigation. And those people were very loyal to Bob Mueller,” David Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor himself who worked under Mueller in the U.S. Attorney’s homicide division, said on MSNBC’s Up with David Gura.
JUST IN: Attorney General William Barr says in a new letter to lawmakers that he expects to release a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report "by mid-April, if not sooner."
Read the full letter: https://t.co/QH3vZSfIlk pic.twitter.com/0aFAKULIEz
— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) March 29, 2019
“Now that the special council’s investigation is at an end, that universe is breaking apart,” Kirschner added, per reporting from Raw Story. “So it is not like they are going to be able to tightly control everything that was learned over the last 22 months about the president and his administration.”
Kirschner was taken aback somewhat that the leaks were coming out. “I’m a little surprised, because once loyal to Bob Mueller, always loyal to Bob Mueller,” he said.
But less surprising to Kirschner, he said, was the fact that “these hard-working law enforcement agents and prosecutors are seeing this gross injustice by Bill Barr misrepresenting what they found over a 22-month investigation.”
The leaks “can’t help but come out,” he added, especially since the investigators are “frustrated that [their findings] are being misrepresented” by the attorney general and the president.
“Truth is truth, and it needs to get out,” said Kirschner.