(CNN) Ted Cruz is a good lawyer. He can make a convincing case that what you think you know isn't actually right -- and make you reassess your view.

At issue was the fact that special counsel Robert Mueller had written a letter to Attorney General William Barr in late March in which he took issue with the four-page letter summarizing Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that the AG had released to Congress days earlier.

Mueller was concerned that Barr's summary didn't capture the report's conclusions and felt the public was confused because of it. He asked Barr to release more information -- in particular summary reports the special counsel had prepared -- to provide more context. Barr refused. Almost two weeks later, when asked under oath by lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill about how the special counsel's office felt about his letter, Barr equivocated.

Democrats went bananas when the news of Mueller's letter broke on the eve of Barr's testimony. Cruz, however, insisted this was all much ado about nothing. Here's the key bit from Cruz's "questioning" of Barr during the Judiciary Committee hearing:

CRUZ: The principal attack the Democratic senators have marshaled upon you concerns this March 27 letter from Robert Mueller, and it's an attack that I want people to understand just how revealing it is. If this is their whole argument, they ain't got nothing.

So their argument is as follows, and let me see if I understand it correctly. You initially, when you received the Mueller report, released to Congress and the public a four-page summary of the conclusions. Then on March 27, Mr. Mueller asked you to release an additional 19 pages, the introduction and summary that he had drafted. And indeed, in the letter what he says is, quote, "I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time." And the reason he says it is that it is that to fully capture the context, nature and substance of the office's work and conclusion.

So you did not release those 19 pages at that time. Instead, a couple of weeks later you released 448 pages, the entire report, which includes those 19 pages. Do I have that timeline correct?

BARR: That's right.

CRUZ: So their entire argument is General Barr, you suppressed the 19 pages that are entirely public that we have that we can read that they know every word of it and their complaint is it was delayed a few weeks and that was because of your decision not to release the report piecemeal but rather to release those 19 pages along with the entire 448 pages produced by the special counsel?

BARR: Yes.

Pretty convincing, right? What difference does it make that Barr didn't release the summary documents that Mueller and his team wanted out? They didn't demand that Barr do so! And Barr released the whole damn report -- with relatively few redactions! -- just a few weeks later! This is all just faux outrage from the Democrats who didn't get the collusion/coordination/conspiracy or obstruction charge they wanted and are now scrambling to find something -- anything -- to pin on President Donald Trump to score political points!

The problem with Cruz's logic -- and I strongly suspect he knew this going into the hearing -- is that it misses the point. The argument surrounding Mueller's letter -- and Barr's lack of acknowledgment of it in real time -- isn't that it somehow altered what was in the Mueller report. The argument was this: By releasing a letter two days after receiving the Mueller report that said there was no collusion and no obstruction and then -- in congressional testimony and in a news conference on the day of the public release of the report -- refusing to acknowledge his awareness of some concerns about his letter from Mueller, what Barr did was heavily influence public opinion before the actual report was ever public.

For several weeks between Barr's summary letter and the release of the actual report, very few people outside of Barr and his deputies had seen the full Mueller report. That allowed Barr massive power to shape public sentiment about the report before anyone had seen it.

Within hours of the release of Barr's letter on Sunday, March 24, none other than Trump tweeted this : "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!" (That wasn't accurate, even according to Barr's summary, which included this line taken directly from Mueller : "While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.")

What Barr's letter -- and subsequent refusal to acknowledge the issues Mueller himself had with it -- did was allow Trump and his allies a running start to make their case that the special counsel investigation had been what the President had maintained all along: a witch hunt in search of a crime that it couldn't ultimately discover.

That is the bone of contention here. And Cruz knows it.