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Neal Katyal, the former DOJ official who wrote the special counsel rules, says Attorney General William Barr is going beyond the rules with the Mueller report.

Katyal said on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber, “I think what’s important is Barr going well beyond the rules. He is kind of improvising on his own in lots of important ways. He is kind of like freestyling. And in ways that I think are really damaging. You’ve talked a little bit about this already on your show tonight. So Mueller says he can’t decide whether or not there is obstruction of justice or not. I won’t exonerate, do not exonerate effectively. And Barr takes it on himself to say oh, no, I’m going clear the precedent. That’s one thing. Another thing, the redactions that you’ve been talking about and that we just saw the “SNL” skit about. Barr provided four little quotes from the Mueller report, not even one complete sentence from it, and it raises suspicion. It’s like those movie reviews like you see on the poster. Greatest movie ever, but the full quote is “This is not the greatest movie ever” or something like that. I don’t know what the make of but I do know that Barr wrote a very tendentious memo last summer. That does raise concerns among the American public what does the report say and when can we see it?”

Video:

Neal Katyal, the former DOJ official who wrote the special counsel rules, says Attorney General William Barr is going beyond the rules with the Mueller report. https://t.co/6enJUZH5Tj pic.twitter.com/9ff3jFITTZ — PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) April 1, 2019

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Barr is making it up as he goes along

William Barr appears to have been nominated by Trump to be the next attorney general for one reason, and that is to suppress and spin the Mueller report to help Donald Trump. When the official wrote the special counsel rules goes on television to tell the country that Barr’s behavior is not the way that these rules are supposed to work, something is wrong.

Trump thought that he could use Barr to pull a fast one on the American people. He could hide Barr’s report while issuing his own version while hoping that the American people would eventually forget about Mueller’s full report.

That isn’t what’s happening.

Instead, Trump has made the situation by keeping the report in the news. Trump chose Barr for this specific task, but the results are backfiring on the president and increasing demand for the full Mueller report to be released.

Trump get of jail free card has turned into chants of lock him up that will echo from sea to shining sea.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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