Countless questions raised by the #fakeBarr spin - a legal echo

William Barr threw his credibility in the gutter
By Elie Honig reported on CNN
Mueller report is quite the page-turner

When it finally came to light this week, special counsel Robert Mueller's report seemed to animate everyone -- and satisfy no one.

This is an echo opinion published on CNN.com

#fakeBarr gave a "spin" summary with misleading information about the Robert Mueller Special Counsel report about Donald Trump

In this weekly column "Cross-exam," Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor and CNN legal analyst, gives his take on the latest legal news and answers questions from readers. Post your questions below. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Honig answers reader questions on "CNN Newsroom" at 5:40 p.m. ET Sundays.

(CNN) Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report is here. 

In fact, the report is more than 400 pages long, and raises countless new questions -- so many, in fact, that we decided to run a special installment of "Cross-exam" to answer them. Let's dig in.

Stan in Montana: Mueller spent two years investigating. Why did we need a meaningless summary filtered by Attorney General William Barr?  "Meaningless" would have been an improvement. 

Now that we've seen the report itself, we know that Barr's four-page summary -- which he later claimed was not actually a summary -- was misleading and manipulative.
Two main things jump out about how Barr used his letter to preemptively distort perceptions of Mueller's report. First, Barr told us that Mueller could not decide the obstruction issue, which "leaves it to the Attorney General." 

Predictably, and true to his previously stated hostility to Mueller's obstruction inquiry, Barr gave a thumbs-down -- declaring that obstruction charges do not apply to Donald Trump as potus.
However, Mueller likely had no intention for Barr to jump in. 

Nowhere in the report does Mueller call on the Attorney General to decide the obstruction issue. Rather, Mueller notes that he specifically "determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes" (Volume 2, Page 2) because Department of Justice policy prevents indictment of a sitting president.

Given that Justice Department policy ties Mueller's hands on charging Trump criminally, Mueller appears to refer the obstruction matter to Congress: "[w]ith respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice." (Volume 2, Page 8).

This line is somewhat ambiguous. Mueller appears to refer the obstruction inquiry to Congress to consider impeachment proceedings, (Just MaineWriter opinion, I don't believe any incidental language wass intended in the Mueller report.), though he might simply be mentioning that Congress has the power to take legislative action (see MaineWriter parentheses!). 

Either way, it is notable that Mueller invoked Congress in his analysis of the obstruction issue. Yet in his four-page summary, Barr made no mention of Mueller's call to Congress on obstruction -- which might be the single most significant line of the entire report.

Second, Barr quoted the Mueller report selectively and strategically to protect Trump. For example, Barr told us the good news for Trump on Russia: Mueller found that "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

Yet that quote from Barr turns out to be only the second half of a complete sentence. In the first half of that same sentence -- which Barr clipped off -- Mueller tells us, "Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts..." (Volume I, Page 1-2). This kind of intentional, selective quotation would get an ordinary lawyer torn apart by a judge.

For nearly a month since he first received Mueller's report, Barr gave Congress and the American people an inaccurate and disingenuous account of Mueller's findings. Now that the report has been released, we can clearly see how Barr issued a selective summary of Mueller's findings that benefited Trump. Through his handling of the Mueller report, Barr has thrown his credibility and independence in the gutter.