Twitter Can't Get Over The "Lightly" Redacted Version Of The Mueller Report
Well, it's happening, folks. Attorney General William Barr has released the Mueller report and the world finally gets to see (with some redactions) what Robert Mueller's two-year Russia probe found. These tweets about the released Mueller report are taking over the internet, because this is a pretty big deal.
In case you need a refresher, Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report on the Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr on March 22. The investigation aimed to find whether President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election, but neither Congress nor the public had immediate access to the findings. Barr did release a four-page summary on March 24 after he went through the 400-page report, in which he wrote that Mueller didn't find any coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in the country's efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But Mueller's findings stopped short of exonerating Trump or the campaign of obstruction of justice, as was expressly stated in the report.
Although Trump celebrated the summary of the findings, Congress was not as thrilled. Various members such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer raised some questions about the possible limitations or biases in Barr's report, leading many to believe there was more to the findings than Barr had revealed, particularly because Barr critiqued Mueller's obstruction-focused investigation before he was even appointment AG.
As of Thursday, April 18, the public finally got to see those findings and determine whether Barr's summary was, in fact, limited in its scope. Although most of the report is available to the public, large swaths were redacted in order to protect ongoing matters, personal information of peripheral people, or information that would endanger intelligence efforts. However, Barr said at an April 18 press conference that he would work with some lawmakers to allow them to see some of the redacted information, per the New York Times.
Finally, it's here. So what does it say? Well, don't get your hopes too high. Twitter couldn't help but notice how the Attorney General's office did us all a little "favor" and gave us less reading to do. Certain swaths of the report are so heavily redacted, it feels like reading a bar code.
However, the report did offer some insights, so it wasn't a total loss (you'd run out of Sharpie, redacting a full 400-plus pages). One of the more interesting tidbits was details about the 10 incidents that Mueller apparently considered when investigating whether the president committed obstruction of justice, which included the president's conduct regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn, his firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and his instruction to former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller himself. Awkward.
Ahead of the report's full release, Trump changed his celebratory tone from his March tweet that read "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!" to a more attack-oriented tone. On Monday, April 15, just four days ahead of the report's scheduled release, Trump tweeted, "Mueller, and the A.G. based on Mueller findings (and great intelligence), have already ruled No Collusion, No Obstruction. These were crimes committed by Crooked Hillary, the DNC, Dirty Cops and others! INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!"
Following the report's release, Trump again tweeted out his supposed vindication with a Game of Thrones-inspired tweet, reading,
No collusion. No obstruction. For the haters and the radical left Democrats — Game Over.
Well, Congress and the public finally have access to the findings and can decide for themselves.
