George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway who has been critical of President Trump, on Thursday called out Attorney General William Barr over how he originally framed the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
“Could you imagine what a judge would say if you cropped a sentence this way in a brief?” Conway tweeted after Mueller’s 400-page report was released. Many noted following the report’s release that Barr’s original four-page summary of Mueller’s investigation excluded a part of the special counsel’s conclusions on collusion.
{mosads}Mueller wrote in his report that the 2016 Trump campaign knew that it would benefit from Russia’s illegal efforts to interfere in the election. However, he said that the campaign did not commit any criminal wrongdoing to help in those efforts.
“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” the report said.
In his initial memo, Barr, citing a partial quote from the report, wrote in his summary released last month that Mueller “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Conway, a frequent critic of Trump’s, took issue with the framing, saying in a separate tweet that Barr never acknowledged the “substance” of what he cropped out.
The widely anticipated report on Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference and Trump was released on Thursday. Mueller did not establish that the Trump campaign knowingly colluded with Moscow.
The report notes that Mueller was unable to “conclusively determine” that no criminal conduct occurred in regards to obstruction of justice.
“While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the report states.