Here's how Bill Barr screwed up — and got Donald Trump into even more trouble: ex-prosecutor

On Sunday, former federal prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner highlighted why President Donald Trump’s Attorney General William Barr made a grave mistake in waiting for House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) to subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, rather than moving quickly to release it on his own terms.

“There’s been a lot of talk about whether Chairman Nadler was right to pursue subpoenaing the report,” said Kirschner. “And I actually think there’s one important reason that he is right, and that it was wise to subpoena the report. If Barr was going to say, ‘you know what, I’ll give you a copy on my own without a subpoena,’ well then Barr would have been free to redact away. It could have been a redaction jamboree before he voluntarily provided a copy of the report to Chairman Nadler and his committee.”

“However, once a subpoena has been issued for that report, then I think there’s going to be a much more exacting standard with respect to every single redaction made by Barr,” said Kirschner. “Now, if he’s redacting something that he shouldn’t be, if he’s redacting something solely to protect the president, there is an argument that that is actually an obstruction of that judicial committee’s work in subpoenaing what is a very important document to their responsibilities.”

“So I think it was smart that they’re going down the subpoena road, and let’s see if Barr complies,” Kirschner concluded.

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