President Donald Trump's team says it will release a "counter report" after the redacted version of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller is released April 18.

Why?

After all, Trump was delighted when his hand-picked anti-Mueller-investigation attorney general issued a four-page letter putting the happiest possible spin for the president on the 400-plus page Mueller report.

What Trump tweeted in March

The president tweeted:

And:

That last part isn’t true, of course. In his letter summarizing Mueller’s report, Attorney General William Barr said Mueller states that “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him” of possible obstruction of justice.

At the time that Barr released his letter, Trump didn't mention that he already was preparing a "counter report."

The president was too busy tweeting happily about Mueller.

Trump started the report in 2018

Now that a redacted version of the report is about to be released, Trump and his lawyers clearly fear that even a heavily redacted edition of the report filed by Mueller will be damaging, and they are again are talking about their "counter report."

Suddenly, it's déjà vu all over again.

Last year Trump tweeted:

Trump even spoke about how a large portion of his "counter report" already had been written. As if the president and his people expected him to be accused of criminal behavior that they would be attempting to refute.

Hmm.

Why does he want to debunk Mueller?

Now that the final report has been filed Trump's guys probably added a little to that 87 pages. Given his opinion of Mueller, I presume the president still wants to debunk the special counsel's version.

For example, he tweeted:

Disgraced and discredited? (Although he doesn't say by whom, other than Trump himself.) Still, the president also claimed that Mueller and his team weren't particularly honest.

Tweeting:

So there's no truth in the report? It's a bunch of lies?

Trump is talking about a report that Trump has been saying cleared him?

Trump also implied that Mueller is a demon destroying the justice system.

He tweeted:

You get the idea.

Trump wants folks to ignore the report

I could have quoted a LOT more tweets from the president saying essentially the same thing: Mueller cannot be trusted. For past couple of years Trump has consistently urged the American people to ignore the special counsel's final report. To dismiss it out of hand.

As when he tweeted:

Conflicted, illegal and rigged?

That's not what the president was saying a few weeks ago.

He spoke of being "exonerated," even when his own AG specifically said he wasn't.

So, now a portion of the report is being released -- not ALL of it, as the American people deserve, and as they got with the Starr report on President Bill Clinton -- and Trump is backtracking into full defensive mode.

His team has gotten back to work on that "counter report," which they plan to release shortly after the Mueller report is released. Which means, I suppose, that they've either seen the report and know there's bad news in it, or they haven't seen the report and presume there is bad news in it.

Why would they think that? And why would a 'counter report' even be necessary?

I mean, whatever happened to what Trump called "Complete and Total EXONERATION?

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.