Bombshell! (or not)

From WaPo

But members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant. “It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity. … The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”

Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”

As has been pointed out by many, the manner in which this is being reported means that neither the NYT or WaPo is actually talking to anyone on the Mueller Special Counsel, but rather reporting hearsay from people who are supposedly "close associates" with people from Special Counsel.

Moreover, as these alleged "leaks" become more specific, the issue that these associates are complaining about is regarding the obstruction portion of the probe, rather than the primary conclusion that there was no conspiracy or coordination.

So if the complaint is in regards to the "subjective" questions about obstruction, then these reports are truly nonthingburgers. Certainly disagreement about obstruction within the ranks of Mueller associates was to be expected. Everything about the Mueller wording regarding Obstruction suggested disagreement within the ranks.

Let's not forget. The wording from the primary conclusion report was entirely Muellers. It's almost as if the issue is as much about the manner in which Mueller (not Barr) summarized those findings. With all due respect to these investigators, their findings did not convince Mueller that the President committed obstruction, and quite obviously did not convince the A.G.

The second alleged complaint is that these summaries were written with the idea to be turned over to the public. But again, the A.G. quoted Mueller in the four page letter, while suggesting that more information would be coming at a later time. So the idea that the summary of principle conclusions was not accompanied by these reports is not a very good complaint.

But as Ed Morrissey points out:

This doesn’t make a lot of sense for a few reasons. First, Mueller himself is still working with Barr to redact the report. If Mueller didn’t think it needed to be redacted, or that the summaries were ready for release now, there’s nothing to prevent him from saying so directly and publicly. At the very least, Mueller would not cooperate with Barr if he thought the AG was dealing dishonestly with him and the report.

One can certainly assume that there were people on this particular team that were looking to put a dent in the President's reputation regardless of findings. Their path to that goal would have been with obstruction. There might also be some people working on the team with a more traditional view of obstruction who didn't want to go off the deep end by making up new forms of obstruction that have not been prosecuted before.

Certainly the former would be very upset that Barr made the determination that he did, especially without first providing their own conclusions to go along with them. I suspect that much of the debate post release will be about obstruction, which certainly completely misses the entire point of all of this.

If there was never any collusion, conspiracy, or coordination, then all of this has been a giant partisan waste of time, all for the sake of smearing a President and his associates. Since none of this should have happened in the first place (going all the way back to the original FBI investigation) - the idea that we should concern ourselves with the fact that the President was unhappy being the target of a political witch hunt is not exactly much real fodder for serious people.