The eagerly awaited report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation was finally released, and it cleared up the situation like a forty-pound dirtball dropped from the roof of a ten-story penthouse. Into a child’s wading pool. With children in it. Imaginary children, of course.
The report was 448 pages long, only 52 short of a ream — though both President Donald Trump and the Democratic Congress must be feeling like the full weight of a ream is banging them in the head. He, for what it said, and they, for what it didn’t.
As surprising as a 420 run on ranch Doritos, the release turns out to be as different from Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary as baby salamanders are from nuclear powered submarine biological waste disposal canisters.
At least when it comes to the parts that weren’t redacted. Those little black bars covered about a tenth of Mueller’s report. Barr’s bars. Barr’s barren bars. Which barely barred us from seeing what the bard of special counsels wanted bared.
Official Lapdog Barr’s yapping misdirection before the public unveiling was hard to hear due to the clicking of his toenails on the linoleum. The drool was also distracting. Records for gratuitous sycophancy have been shattered. This is what was expected from Jeff Sessions. Rudy Giuliani must be green with envy.
A less redacted version of Mueller’s report will be available to a limited number of members of Congress. The apparent goal is to give each and every American citizen their own version of the report with individual redactions. Here’s hoping there’s a rainbow of stripes to go with the black bars.
The attorney general said the report totally exonerated the president, pretending the account didn’t include “While this report cannot conclude that the President committed a crime, it also cannot exonerate him.” Which is as far from exoneration as can be accomplished using the English language.
Barr went on to echo “no obstruction” approximately 7,000 times when actually the report says, and this is a direct quote: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” But so state, they do not.
In other words, if they thought he didn’t do it, they’d tell us. But they’re not telling us. Which might lead a normal person to conclude that Mueller is saying the opposite. In his own sly way.
The report described Moscow’s attempts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as “sweeping and systemic.” And as everyone knows, Russia only helps Russia. It also referenced the justice department’s policy not to prosecute a sitting president but mentioned that Congress could, or just wait till he’s not president anymore.
It’s almost like the Mueller’s report proposed trying one or the other. Forcing Democrats to ask themselves the tough question: “Why not both?”
Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comic and former sod farmer in New Berlin, Wisconsin.
