Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.
A man’s son may, but at length the truth will out.
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare
Bill Barr continues to sit on the Mueller report. One supposes he is trying to hide something contained in the 400+ pages, something damning to Donald Trump. Barr’s four page summary, released two weeks ago, was interpreted as “full exoneration” by Trump and the Trumpsters, even though the verbiage quotes Mueller as explicitly stating it was not an exoneration of the President, specifically in the area of obstruction of justice.
Barr and Trump can do what they will, but in the end, the report will become public. Even if Barr obfuscates and delays and redacts to his heart’s content, the Special Counsel and his team have the facts. They had even, according to leaked accounts, prepared “public-facing” summaries of the report’s main sections, summaries that were written specifically so as to not require any redaction. Barr ignored these summaries in favor of his own white-washed summary.
But now, member of the Mueller team, after 22 months of the most disciplined leak control imaginable, have, in the wake of being disbanded, begun to let important tidbits out. The reason seems to be that they are extremely dissatisfied with Barr’s characterization of their work. The obstruction charges were in particular “very serious”, and the evidence strong. We do not know the whole reasoning, but Mueller’s decision not to present a case for indictment may well have been a decision based on DOJ’s long standing rule (not a law!) against indicting a sitting President. Why recommend indictment if the Attorney General would summarily refuse to prosecute? Likewise, even though Mueller did recommend against a criminal case for conspiracy with the Russians, we do not know the breadth and depth of whatever evidence does exist for conspiracy, regardless of whether it was sufficient for an airtight criminal case, the only kind Mueller and company have yet established.
We don’t know… but we will know. As I said, even if Barr sits on the report until hell freezes over, the people who know what’s in the report still know what they know.
And they can testify to that knowledge.
Neal Katyal was the DOJ lawyer who drew up the Special Counsel regulations after the Special Prosecutor law was allowed to lapse. KenStarr, the man who investigated Bill Clinton, was a Special Prosecutor. After that fiasco, Congress chose to sunset the Special Prosecutor idea, and DOJ replaced the office with that of a Special Counsel. In an interview, Katyal made the point that a Special Counsel is completely independent. Yes, he is required to submit his report to the Attorney General, who then has complete discretion as to what to release, to Congress and to the public. Barr is showing us what his intentions are.
But Katyal said that it was a specific decision to make the Special Counsel completely independent of DOJ, just for the situation when an AG might act politically w.r.t. disseminating the results. Which Barr is obviously doing. That independence means that the entire team is not subject to any DOJ control as to what they can or cannot say after the Special Counsel has been disbanded. Mueller and his team can say whatever they wish, and specifically can speak freely to House Oversight, Judicial and Intelligence committees. One can only imagine that, if team members are disgruntled with Barr’s handling of the report, and how he is ignoring their findings, they will be eager to set the record straight. And especially in the public forum of committee hearings.
Then there’s the matter of Trump’s tax returns. Richard Neal, an extremely taciturn man, is the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. In accordance with a law in effect since the early 20th century, he has requested Trump’s tax returns for the last six years. These are the same returns Trump pledged, during the campaign, that he would release after being elected, but has subsequently reversed himself, telling everyone to go screw themselves: he will not release.
The law mentioned is very specific. If the Ways & Means chair (or even the Ways & Means chief of staff) makes such a request, for any American, the IRS “shall supply” the requested returns. There is no gray area, no ambiguous language, no requirement for providing any justification. They simply “shall supply” the requested returns, and any supporting documentation. Cut and dried.
Trump has appointed lackeys as the number one and number two men at the IRS (he even had Mitch McConnell fast track their confirmations, even ahead of the Secretary of Defense nomination!) Naturally, they are not complying with the law and the returns have not been given to Mr. Neal. The whole thing will go to court, and one can expect it to be fast-tracked, almost certainly to the Supreme Court. It is important to note that there has never been a single case since the law was enacted where the IRS failed to comply. The language is as unambiguous as it gets. Even with five conservatives on the SCOTUS, it would seem impossible to see them rule in Trump’s favor.
So, yes. At the present moment, the facts lie at least partially hidden from scrutiny. But even with the depth and width of corruption and outright criminality displayed daily by this administration, even with their blatant and brazen stonewalling, those facts will come to light. And likely sooner than later.
At length the truth will indeed out.
© 2019 Chuck Puckett