The Barr memo is being grossly misinterpreted — exactly as intended
In fact, what is hinted at in the linguistic contortions could be pretty damning.
By now I’m sure you’ve read a ton of diaries about how the Barr memo doesn’t really say much. What I want to do with this diary is tease out, clause by clause, exactly HOW absurd the Barr memo really is. Then I’ll provide my synthesis of what I think the Barr memo may be hiding based on those contortions. I’ll also include some pointed questions that I’d love to see Barr asked in front of a congressional committee.
First off, we will start with the assumption that the Barr memo is factually accurate. By that I mean that each specific statement “letter of the law” has been vetted. As partisan and angry Congress is over the Mueller investigation, I am sure Barr is aware of the risk of making a single factual mistake in his memo. He would be referred for making false statements to Congress in a heartbeat. That means that his preferred method of misdirection will be to place two mis-connected statements together and let the reader infer an incorrect conclusion.
On to the analysis itself. We start with a generous dose of doublespeak and major, telling omissions in the introductory paragraphs.
I am writing today to advise you of the principal conclusions reached by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to inform you about the status of my initial review…Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.
On the one hand, AG Barr is telling us that he’s not done with his review. He hasn’t necessarily read the entire report, nor has he digested any particular element of the report. On the other, he indicates that he is ready to provide us with the principal, en.wiktionary.org/... conclusions. As in most important conclusions. So he hasn’t done a complete review but he is already able to tell us what is most important. Let’s see the important questions left out here:
What factual criteria were used to determine the importance of conclusions to the public interest?
How many conclusions total were actually provided by Mr Mueller?
We any of the other conclusions important (but not most important), significant, relevant or trivial?
And then we jump into a discussion of a bunch of details of the report… Wait a minute. That’s a jump over a gaping chasm. Let’s explore this. Where are the statements of scope and objective?
Per the special counsel regulations:
The Special Counsel will be provided with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.
We know there is a heavily redacted memorandum providing detailed instructions to the special counsel, yet the Barr memorandum restricts itself to three topics. He fails to characterize the mandate that the special counsel was set to, nor whether the special counsel responded completely to that mandate. Important questions:
Did the special counsel meet the objectives of his assignment and memorandum of instruction?
How many paragraphs are contained in that instruction?
How many lines of inquiry?
Did the special counsel investigate and develop facts responsive to all of them?
Did the special counsel provide a report on findings responsive to all of them?
Of course, if the Barr memorandum had provided that information, he would need to be able to discuss in some manner all of the other stuff. Duck the context question entirely. Better to gloss over that and hope no one notices.
Now let’s move on to the piece that is being misrepresented in the media about no conspiracy.
The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. … Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks … But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
Did you catch the two baits and switches in the above paragraph?
1) The ill-gotten gains (stolen information) were disseminated by intermediaries, but in drawing a conclusion, Barr judges that only coordination with government persons is important enough to mention to congress? It leaves a roger stone and trump-tower-meeting shaped hole; perhaps filled in by Mueller’s “non principal’ conclusions.
2) Second, notice how the offer received by the Trump campaign was for assistance with the campaign (which would itself be a violation of federal election law). How is an offer of ‘campaign assistance’ supposed to be a clear driving line to a highly secret intelligence operation to hack into Democratic systems? Last time I checked, intelligence operations were pretty careful about details of there ops, “sources and methods” and all that, so of course no one in the Trump campaign would have had a phone contact labelled “Boris, GRU operative” in their phone. Also, I am suspicious because there has been some public reporting about Guccifer 2.0 being outed as a GRU operative and people who might be connected to Trum (www.cnn.com/...).
If Barr was trying to exonerate Individual-1 and his campaign, we have to wonder where are all of the other violations of federal law that could have stemmed from investigating these contacts? Where are the turns of phrase like “conspired with the Russian government or their intermediaries in these efforts” or “despite multiple offers from Russian affiliated individual to assist the Trump campaign, none of these contacts resulted in actual assistance or were pursued to the point that would rise to the level of conspiracy against the United States”.
And what about that dangling “multiple” stuck in there? As far as I can find, there were only 2 documented offers (Offers to Papadoulos, and from Veselnitskaya). Maybe the Wikileaks connection counts as one more? How many were there and how are they being counted? Also as extensive as the Mueller report was, it has a finite number of such overtures, why couldn’t they be counted? The obvious conclusion is because enumerating them would raise additional awkward questions, including perhaps members of the Trump campaign conspiring or colluding with Russian affiliated individuals for example (Trump tower Moscow anyone?).
How the hell do you justify such an absurdly narrow and contorted position as the most important of the report?
Did any members of the Trump campaign conspire or attempt to conspire with those intermediaries?
Was Roger Stone associated with the Trump Campaign per the definitions in this memorandum?
In fact, what is hinted at in the linguistic contortions could be pretty damning.
By now I’m sure you’ve read a ton of diaries about how the Barr memo doesn’t really say much. What I want to do with this diary is tease out, clause by clause, exactly HOW absurd the Barr memo really is. Then I’ll provide my synthesis of what I think the Barr memo may be hiding based on those contortions. I’ll also include some pointed questions that I’d love to see Barr asked in front of a congressional committee.
First off, we will start with the assumption that the Barr memo is factually accurate. By that I mean that each specific statement “letter of the law” has been vetted. As partisan and angry Congress is over the Mueller investigation, I am sure Barr is aware of the risk of making a single factual mistake in his memo. He would be referred for making false statements to Congress in a heartbeat. That means that his preferred method of misdirection will be to place two mis-connected statements together and let the reader infer an incorrect conclusion.
On to the analysis itself. We start with a generous dose of doublespeak and major, telling omissions in the introductory paragraphs.
I am writing today to advise you of the principal conclusions reached by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to inform you about the status of my initial review…Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.
On the one hand, AG Barr is telling us that he’s not done with his review. He hasn’t necessarily read the entire report, nor has he digested any particular element of the report. On the other, he indicates that he is ready to provide us with the principal, en.wiktionary.org/... conclusions. As in most important conclusions. So he hasn’t done a complete review but he is already able to tell us what is most important. Let’s see the important questions left out here:
What factual criteria were used to determine the importance of conclusions to the public interest?
How many conclusions total were actually provided by Mr Mueller?
We any of the other conclusions important (but not most important), significant, relevant or trivial?
And then we jump into a discussion of a bunch of details of the report… Wait a minute. That’s a jump over a gaping chasm. Let’s explore this. Where are the statements of scope and objective?
Per the special counsel regulations:
The Special Counsel will be provided with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.
We know there is a heavily redacted memorandum providing detailed instructions to the special counsel, yet the Barr memorandum restricts itself to three topics. He fails to characterize the mandate that the special counsel was set to, nor whether the special counsel responded completely to that mandate. Important questions:
Did the special counsel meet the objectives of his assignment and memorandum of instruction?
How many paragraphs are contained in that instruction?
How many lines of inquiry?
Did the special counsel investigate and develop facts responsive to all of them?
Did the special counsel provide a report on findings responsive to all of them?
Of course, if the Barr memorandum had provided that information, he would need to be able to discuss in some manner all of the other stuff. Duck the context question entirely. Better to gloss over that and hope no one notices.
Now let’s move on to the piece that is being misrepresented in the media about no conspiracy.
The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. … Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks … But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
Did you catch the two baits and switches in the above paragraph?
1) The ill-gotten gains (stolen information) were disseminated by intermediaries, but in drawing a conclusion, Barr judges that only coordination with government persons is important enough to mention to congress? It leaves a roger stone and trump-tower-meeting shaped hole; perhaps filled in by Mueller’s “non principal’ conclusions.
2) Second, notice how the offer received by the Trump campaign was for assistance with the campaign (which would itself be a violation of federal election law). How is an offer of ‘campaign assistance’ supposed to be a clear driving line to a highly secret intelligence operation to hack into Democratic systems? Last time I checked, intelligence operations were pretty careful about details of there ops, “sources and methods” and all that, so of course no one in the Trump campaign would have had a phone contact labelled “Boris, GRU operative” in their phone. Also, I am suspicious because there has been some public reporting about Guccifer 2.0 being outed as a GRU operative and people who might be connected to Trum (www.cnn.com/...).
If Barr was trying to exonerate Individual-1 and his campaign, we have to wonder where are all of the other violations of federal law that could have stemmed from investigating these contacts? Where are the turns of phrase like “conspired with the Russian government or their intermediaries in these efforts” or “despite multiple offers from Russian affiliated individual to assist the Trump campaign, none of these contacts resulted in actual assistance or were pursued to the point that would rise to the level of conspiracy against the United States”.
And what about that dangling “multiple” stuck in there? As far as I can find, there were only 2 documented offers (Offers to Papadoulos, and from Veselnitskaya). Maybe the Wikileaks connection counts as one more? How many were there and how are they being counted? Also as extensive as the Mueller report was, it has a finite number of such overtures, why couldn’t they be counted? The obvious conclusion is because enumerating them would raise additional awkward questions, including perhaps members of the Trump campaign conspiring or colluding with Russian affiliated individuals for example (Trump tower Moscow anyone?).
How the hell do you justify such an absurdly narrow and contorted position as the most important of the report?
Did any members of the Trump campaign conspire or attempt to conspire with those intermediaries?
Was Roger Stone associated with the Trump Campaign per the definitions in this memorandum?
Next read the characterization:
The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Influencing an election is changing the course of the election. That would be a different, and broader statement that interference, which relates to specific actions by the lawful agents of the states in administering the election. The Russian nationals and agencies were charged with interfering with the lawful activities of officers of the United States, for example. The quote from the Mueller report uses the more restrictive term “interference” while the Barr memorandum draws a conclusion using a much broader term of “influence”.
What are the specific definitions of the terms “influence” and “interference” in the Special Counsel’s report and the summary memorandum?
Now lets look at the bait and switches with respect to the “no obstruction”
In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that "the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference," and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President's intent with respect to obstruction. Generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding.
Notice the context switch within the same paragraph. Barr is being careful here to avoid saying that Individual-1 is clean. He is being very careful to issue a finding with respect to a very specific thing, “election interference”. The italicized section shows the switch. Barr is talking generally, but at no point does he actually say whether the special counsel found evidence of other crimes (perhaps financial) which could have provided a nexus to a contemplated proceeding. Last time I checked, bank and insurance fraud cases could be criminal, and were usually happen in a court proceeding.
In my interpretation of the Barr memo, it is worth pointing out the original meaning of “the exception that proves the rule” en.wikipedia.org/… . Barr would have no need to use language that was so highly qualified, with multiple dimensions: “government”, “election interference”, “Russia” if there were nothing to find. In fact, I will point to that abuse of qualifiers suffusing the Barr memo as pretty solid evidence of a cover-up.
Think about what has become public with respect to the Trump Tower negotiations, the copyright deals in China, unregistered lobbying and other various and sundry activities, which are conspicuously absent from the Barr memo. I think the ‘shadow’ cast by the gaps in the Barr memo gives us a change to make a pretty good guess at what Mueller uncovered.
I think what he uncovered was a veritable mountain of evidence of unsophisticated, garden variety quid pro quo corruption.