Dem lawmaker on Barr summary of Mueller report: ‘Whole thing has been a charade’

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a vocal proponent of impeaching President Trump, on Wednesday slammed Attorney General William Barr’s and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Cohen expressed frustration that Barr submitted a summary report to Congress rather than Mueller’s full conclusions on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as whether President Trump obstructed of justice, and slammed McConnell after the Senate leader blocked for the second time this week a resolution calling for Mueller’s report to be made public.

{mosads}“I think this whole thing has been a charade. Bill Barr was appointed to give this type of ‘analysis’ of the Mueller report, and it really discredits and it is an undoing of what Bob Mueller spent 22 months doing, and for him to sum it up in a three-page report,” Cohen said on CNN Wednesday. 

“If there’s nothing in the report that will make people think there was obstruction of justice and or conspiracy with some members of the Trump administration, it should be allowed to be public to see it. The fact that they don’t want the public to see it makes you think they know this was all a whitewash and a charade.” 

“I think this whole thing has been a charade,” @RepCohen tells @jimsciutto after the DOJ says details of the Mueller report will be released in “weeks not months.” https://t.co/VigFsTfMNs pic.twitter.com/Ugj4qvz3TG

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) March 27, 2019

Barr said in his report to Congress that Mueller cleared Trump and his campaign of any claims that they colluded with Russia in 2016, but stopped short of determining whether the president obstructed the subsequent investigation, instead deciding to not take a position on the issue. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said they would not pursue charges over obstructive behavior after reviewing Mueller’s evidence.

“I don’t know that Mueller intended or thought that Bill Barr would interfere and jump into the breach and give his analysis rather than allowing it to go to Congress, who would make the analysis,” Cohen said.

Barr and Rosenstein’s conclusion infuriated Democrats, some of whom suggested that it should not be up to two Trump-nominated officials to make such a conclusion about the president. 

Six House committee chairmen and chairwomen sent a letter to Barr Monday demanding he provide Congress with Mueller’s full report and underlying evidence.

“Your four-page summary of the Special Counsel’s review is not sufficient for Congress, as a coequal branch of government, to perform this critical work. The release of the full report and the underlying evidence and documents is urgently needed by our committees to perform their duties under the Constitution,” they wrote.