Thread by @neal_katyal

THREAD Barr’s opening in hearing is tragic. He says at his confirmation hearing the 2 concerns were: 1) whether he’d interfere with the Mueller investigation, and 2) whether the Mueller Report would be public. On 1), that’s just wrong. 1/

The concern has always been over interfering with the outcome. Barr doesn’t even tell us that he concluded in a period of hours what Mueller didn’t conclude in nearly 2 years, about whether Trump obstructed justice. 2/

Barr can’t even summarize what the concerns have always been, let alone summarize the Mueller Report.

It’s totally misleading, just like Barr’s summary/nonsummary. 3/

Barr's opening words never even acknowledged that Mueller said right at the outset that if he could clear Trump, he would. But he couldn’t. Just like Barr's earlier press conference when he released the report, or his earlier summary/nonsummary. 4/

As far as 2), Barr said that the Special Counsel regulations required Mueller’s Report to remain confidential with the AG. That’s again flatly misleading. The regs require in the first instance the report to be confidential when given to the AG. 5/

But the AG is permitted to publicly disclose it, and indeed there is a whole provision in the regs about that.

And notably, we learned moments ago that Mueller cited exactly that provision in his letter complaining to Barr when Mueller sought release of his report. 6/

This is totally misleading. If my law student summarized or described things this way, they’d get an F.

Conduct totally unbecoming for the Attorney General of the US. 7/7