Wednesday, April 17, 2019

PKG: Washington nervous ahead of Mueller Report publication


The stage is set in Washington for the release of the report by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller who spent more than two years investigating claims of collusion between President Trump and the Russians during the 2016 US Election.


Last month the US Attorney General insisted the report clears the President of collusion, though it failed to exonerate him on the issue of obstruction of justice.


Democrats have piled pressure on the Department of Justice to release the report in full, so that members of the public can draw their own conclusions.


Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks says the city is agog, ahead of the report's appearance.


IN:  "I know what…."

OUT:  SOC

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I know what you're thinking. 

We already know what's in the Mueller Report.

After all, it was just under a month ago that the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, published a summary of the report's conclusions and insisted that it cleared his boss, the President….allowing his boss to make assertions like this one.


TRUMP


And yet…and yet…..we still have not seen the Mueller Report.

It's over 400 pages long…and the Attorney General's prĂ©cis only quoted 101 words of that tome.

Plus, he's loyal to President Trump and some members of Robert Mueller's investigative team are known to be deeply troubled by the way in which he characterized their findings.

So tomorrow, after weeks of pressure, the Attorney General will finally publish the report:  or at least the bits of it that he hasn't decided to black out and redact for confidentiality reasons.

It's a good guess that there will be large parts of the report that suffer that indignity.

The White House is nervous:  key staffers there who were interviewed by the Special Prosecutor under oath are wondering how they come out of the report.

And even the President's former director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci - remember him - says there's reason for the man in the Oval Office also to worry.


SCARAMUCCI


He spoke to MSNBC,

The White House publicly insists the Mueller Report is all ancient history.

The President's most prominent public apologist….his adviser Kellyanne Conway….told Fox that actually wanting to read the report is a media obsession.



CONWAY


But…while the media will be tantalized by the report's actual words rather than the Attorney General's summation of them….Congress will be keeping an even more important watchful eye.

Democrats and some Republicans want to know why Robert Mueller, the Special Prosecutor, specifically decided  that he could not exonerate the President on charges of obstruction of justice.

They also want to know why and how the Attorney General so quickly decided - in less than 48 hours - that there were no grounds to pursue that obstruction claims that had clearly troubled the Special Prosecutor.

Senator Cory Booker…a Presidential candidate…is one Democrat eager to get his hands on the report.


BOOKER


That is a not-so-subtle reminder that while the White House dismisses the Mueller investigation as an expensive waste of time that yielded absolutely nothing, in fact it caught several of the President's associates in its net…..including his former National Security Adviser, his former Campaign Manager, his former Foreign Policy Adviser and many many others.

It's also a reminder that Robert Mueller was leading just one investigation into the President's activities.

There are many others still underway….and some of them may prove more difficult to news-manage as we hurtle towards the President's battle for re-election next year.

 

SOC