Former Attorney General Bill Barr is blasting former special counsel Robert Mueller for his handling of the Russia investigation.
Barr's comments came during an interview with Bari Weiss, former New York Times opinion page editor, on her "Honestly" podcast.
"I don't think he was on top of his game," Barr said of Mueller. "I think he made some very serious errors.
"He goes out and hires partisan Democrats to make up his investigative team, which means half the country is going to be suspicious from the very beginning. That defeated the whole purpose of naming him. I think it was pretty evident within a few months of his taking the position that there had been no collusion.
"But instead of stopping it at that point and letting the country move on, he took two instances that clearly were not obstruction and which even his final report doesn't try to argue were obstruction."
The Washington Examiner noted Mueller, a former FBI director, was named special counsel by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 after then-President Donald Trump ousted FBI Director James Comey. Mueller's report on the Russia investigation was released in April 2019.
Barr said before the release of the report, he had asked Mueller to redact grand jury material.
"I asked him, when you give me the report, you have to sanitize it. I'm in a position to release it as soon as you give it to me because I can make it public under the law," he said. "If there's a delay, a lot of damage can be done to the country, the stock market, and our foreign adversaries. People are going to wonder if the president's going to jail. So, you have to give it to me in a form in which I can release it.
"Yes, he said he understood. I said that this was the most important thing as far as I was concerned. Not having a delay between the time I receive it and the time I can let it go. And lo and behold, they show up with a report with no redactions in it. Instead, on the top of every page, it cannot be released with the grand jury material.
"I don't know why it was done. It was inexplicable to me. They knew very well what I needed. While I took three weeks to redact the report, I had to tell people what the bottom line was: That there was going to be no indictment of the president and, therefore, there was no collusion. I said that he didn't reach a decision on obstruction. I said while he didn't find obstruction, he didn't exonerate him either. However, based on the report, I explained why I didn't find obstruction."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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