When the 400-page Mueller report finally gets released Thursday—with redactions—the Trump administration's response won't just come in the form of a “NO COLLUSION!” tweet. The White House, led by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, has been preparing a “counter-report” set to drop alongside Mueller's findings that will present the administration's own version of events, focused on the allegations of collusion and obstruction of justice, along with Republicans' theory that the investigation was tainted from the start by anti-Trump bias at the F.B.I. Though the counter-report has been in the works for nearly a year, though, it still seems to be a work-in-progress just days before its release—as evidenced by a page count that's been as erratic as Giuliani himself.

Giuliani told Politico journalist Darren Samuelsohn in a 3:00 A.M. text message Tuesday that the report is currently at “34 or 35” pages, adding, “The more concise the better. 400 pages is a novel.” The lawyer must have been up late editing, as just two days before, a Sunday article in the Wall Street Journal quoted Giuliani putting the page count at 140, but adding the president's lawyers "want to whittle it down to about 50." The counter-report's apparent 100+ page hack job is indicative of how the vaunted report's length has varied wildly since first being announced last summer: Giuliani told the Daily Beast in August that the report's first half alone was 58 pages, before saying in a September 3 interview with the New Yorker the entire report was only 45 pages and “would likely grow.” Trump then tweeted in December that the report already had “87 pages done”; by March, the Los Angeles Times reported the report was still “roughly” 80 pages, with the potential to be shorter based on Mueller's findings. “If they exonerate him,” Giuliani said, “we'll just say congratulations.”

The counter-report's currently dwindling page length may be a reflection of the White House‘s confidence in the Mueller report's ability to exonerate the president; as my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported Tuesday, the pre-report atmosphere in the West Wing has been downright “giddy,” and Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal the report was scrapping most of its material on collusion. Those who fear the administration's apparently massive edits will cut out important insights into the Trump administration need not worry, though; according to Giuliani's August interview with the Daily Beast, everything in the report can be found on Google anyway. “I don’t think there's anything in it that isn't publicly available in some form or another,” Giuliani said, adding that there had been no interviews or investigations completed for the report. “There is no [secret] grand jury material here… It'll be our report, put out on... personal stationery, and it would be in response to their report.”

Whether Giuliani's pet project will actually help the president remains to be seen; as retired federal prosecutor Glen Kirschner told the Daily Beast, the counter-report sounds “like pure P.R. nonsense” rather than a valuable rebuttal to Mueller's investigation. It will likely primarily serve as propaganda for the Trump team as they push their “investigate the investigators” narrative, which a Republican source told Sherman that Giuliani is “dead focused” on post-Mueller. As the counter-report's wild shifts in length and scope suggest, though, putting Giuliani and his bizarre “truth isn't truth” rhetoric at the report's helm certainly leaves room for surprises. Trump “knows there’s a give and take” with Giuliani, one Trumpworld figure told Sherman in July. “The give is Rudy is going to fight for him. The take is that you’re going to get some crazy, too.”

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