Attorney General Barr explained before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning why Mueller wanted executive summaries released, and as we learned last night, it had everything to do with the media creating confusion that was inaccurate:

Attorney General Bill Barr says Mueller was “very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report” after his letter on Mueller’s findings was released pic.twitter.com/mA2zRV5GMD — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 1, 2019







Barr testified under oath that Mueller’s problem with the media was that they were reading too much into his decision not to make a decision on obstruction of justice:

I asked him if he was suggesting that the March 24 letter was inaccurate and he said no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate and that the press was reading too much into it. I asked him specifically what his concern was and he said that his concern was focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction.

So there you go. It had everything to do with the media getting it wrong and nothing to do with Barr’s report being inaccurate or misleading.

Further, on the issue of Mueller’s decision not to reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice, AG Barr says that it had nothing to do with the OLC opinion asserting that a president cannot be indicted:

Attorney General Bill Barr: “Special Counsel Mueller stated three times to us…that he emphatically was NOT saying that but for the OLC opinion he would have found obstruction” pic.twitter.com/fwEkYo2tP7 — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 1, 2019

Barr kinda throws Mueller under the bus a bit here, explaining that he and his team didn’t understand why Mueller wasn’t reaching a conclusion on obstruction. This is why he and Rosenstein took it upon themselves to reach an official conclusion on it.