Donald Trump Attacks ‘New York Times’ For Story That Mueller Report Is More Damaging Than Barr Let On
Donald Trump attacked The New York Times on Thursday after the news organization released a story indicating that the Mueller report may be more damaging to the president than the Barr report indicated.
“The New York Times had no legitimate sources, which would be totally illegal, concerning the Mueller Report. In fact, they probably had no sources at all! They are a Fake News paper who have already been forced to apologize for their incorrect and very bad reporting on me!” Trump tweeted.
Trump’s attack comes just after the Times published a story from several anonymous investigators that worked on the 22-month-long Mueller investigation who say that the final report’s findings are worse for the president than Attorney General William Barr’s summary let on.
As The Inquisitr reported previously, some individuals on Mueller’s team worry that Barr has shaped the public’s perception of the investigation before anyone other than Barr has had the opportunity to review it. This means that if and when the report is made public, people will have already made up their minds about the findings.
The concerned investigators also said that Barr was never asked to make a summary of the report, but since he did, he should have provided more information in his accounting of the report.
Barr’s summary said that the report found no collusion between Trump and Russia during his 2016 campaign. He also said that though the report could not make a determination on the question of obstruction of justice, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein believed that the report exonerated Trump of the charge.
The Department of Justice responded to the Times report, according to CBS News,
Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the DOJ, said that releasing any information about the report could be illegal because it contains grand jury information. She then went on to defend Barr’s summary.
“Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the Attorney General decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately — without attempting to summarize the report — with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process,” she said.
She added that the DOJ is working with the special counsel to complete “redactions to the report so that it can be released to Congress and the public.”
On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi called for the report to be released in full as soon as possible, particularly given the concerns about some of Mueller’s team.
The Times responded to Trump’s tweet, saying that his claim is false.
False. Our reporters interviewed multiple government officials and others to gather the facts for the story; read it here: https://t.co/UYGWMnuOQt
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) April 4, 2019
