Mueller Eve? More Like BILL BARR'S JUSTICE-OBSTRUCTING F*CKSHOW EVE!

Everything you need to know about the release of the REDACTED Robert Mueller report tomorrow!

'Twas the night before Mueller and all through the house, everybody was pretty sure whatever "Mueller report" we're getting on Thursday morning is gonna be some bullshit, considering how Bill Barr has been spearheading the most pathetic cover-up we've seen in our human lifetime. First he released a "summary" of the report in his own words, which gave Trump a clean bill of health on all Russia-related questions, then he got mad everybody called it a "summary," then he ignored demands from Congress for the full and unredacted report because "reasons," and the end result tomorrow will likely be as whitewashed as possible, in order to make Trump look good. After all, Bill Barr didn't get this job because Trump wanted to grab him by the pussy. He got it because Trump wanted a Roy Cohn, and Barr has seemingly done everything he can to deliver for the bossman.

If we were as stupid as Barr and Trump would like us to be, we'd probably ignore tomorrow entirely, considering how Bill Barr already told us that Bill Barr has exonerated Trump on all Russian crimes past, present and future -- except  not actually NOPE  -- and also on obstruction of justice, because Bill Barr says so.

Ryan Goodman reported an interesting history story about Bill Barr this week at Just Security, which y'all should all read in full when you have the time. It's about this other time Bill Barr was called upon to make disclosures to Congress, in 1989 when he was working in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) under President George H.W. Bush.

To make a very long story short (read it all yourself, please), Barr had written a memo that concluded it was super OK for the FBI to kidnap people in other countries. This was handy, because as Rachel Maddow explained last night, Poppy Bush had been just suggesting for a while that maybe there should be a coup in Panama and Manuel Noriega should be removed. And now it was OK to kidnap him, in violation of international law! News of the existence of the memo trickled out on Black Friday in 1989, and when Congress asked to see it -- it wasn't classified or anything -- Barr said NUH UH! But he said he could to this other thing:

Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that "summarizes the principal conclusions." Sound familiar?

THAT SOUNDS FAMILIAR!

We don't want to bury the surprise, so we'll tell you right now that when Barr "summarized the principal conclusions," he actually misrepresented and mischaracterized a lot of the conclusions. And he left out A LOT. You know the old expression, "If Bill Barr is a full-of-shit liar in 1989, he's still a full-of-shit liar in 2019." Simpering neophytes who haven't been covering politics for a very long time like Glenn Greenwald might think there's no reason to doubt Bill Barr's goodness or purity of intention, but when you know better, you do better, and that is why people who know better are ready for tomorrow to be a heaping pile of horseshit, based on Barr's past behavior and also the things he's been doing with the Mueller report right in front of our faces.

There are many interesting details in Goodman's historical account, but one common theme is that Barr is a guy who will piss on your leg and tell you he couldn't possibly have just pissed on your leg, because longstanding Justice Department procedures and laws say he didn't just piss on your leg just now. He will insist he's unable to do things he is very obviously able to do, and he appears to have near zero respect for the equal branch of government known as Congress, especially when he is on the payroll of a Republican president who wishes not to be held accountable to oversight from Congress.

Of course, the memo did eventually come out, when Congress subpoenaed it a year and a half later, and now it is in the annals of recent American history filed under "Would you look at this fucking guy? Unfuckingbelievable!"

William Barr Record Of Deception For Bush Calls Credibility Into Question | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC    www.youtube.com 

So what does that tell us about what we're likely to see tomorrow? Well, if we need to spell it out for you, then you're dumber than you look! Expect a fuckton of unnecessary redactions -- a FUCKTON -- and more questions to be raised than questions that are answered. Expect starry-eyed access reporters like NBC's Ken Dilanian to jerk themselves into a lather about how the report fully exonerates Trump, approximately seven seconds after its release, long before they've had time to read it. And expect smart journalists and analysts, including YOURS TRULY RIGHT HERE, to spend the next 72,576 years saying " ACTUALLY , YOU FUCKWITS ... "

Of course, whatever happens tomorrow won't actually be the end of the story. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler authorized subpoenas for the full report -- because, you know, Congress actually is entitled to see the full thing, unredacted, un-whitewashed, un-bullshitted -- and he's ready to use them:  

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) is set to issue a subpoena as early as Friday for all of Mueller's grand-jury information and underlying evidence, which could be used as part of his panel's own investigation. Barr has said he won't ask a court for the grand-jury information and doesn't intend to share the full report with Congress, including passages on "peripheral" third-party figures.

We have a feeling that if what we see tomorrow is some bullshit where 60 percent of the report is redacted, or even 40 percent, Nadler will gavel those subpoenas up Barr's ass faster than he can say "NO COLLUSION."

There's also the matter of US District Court Judge Reggie Walton, who has some novel thoughts about Barr's behavior so far, and about how he may just need to review Barr's redactions to see how much fuckery lies therein:

"The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency," U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a Freedom of Information Act suit demanding access to a report detailing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller. [...]

He also said he'll want to consider whether to order the government to give him an unredacted copy of the report so he can assess whether the redactions are proper.

"That's something we will have to work through. I'll have to think about it," he said.

Walton said he hopes any disputes will be limited because the Justice Department makes the bulk of the document public.

In that hearing, Walton denied a FOIA request from BuzzFeed for the whole shebang to be made public tomorrow, but it's pretty obvious he has some issues with how this is playing out.

Oh yeah, and we're pretty sure Congress will pull Robert Mueller himself in for a public chat before this is all said and done. And from what we've seen recently, Mueller's team is not above talking to the media when they feel like Bill Barr is lying and misrepresenting their work.

Oh yeah, and somebody might leak it. LOL.

Point is, whatever fuckery happens tomorrow, we will eventually know the truth, even if it takes a while. As Ryan Goodman noted last night on the Maddow program, Barr surely knows his own history of taking a shit all over his own shit-caked reputation in order to serve Dear Leaders past and present, and how that's all turned out. And he may not care, because he's just that much of a bad actor. Goodman noted that Barr's very un-American-like behavior during the Poppy Bush administration may have been a factor in why he got a job in the Trump administration in the first place. Hey, it's a gimmick! It's certainly not going to earn him a place in heaven or anything, but he's doing what he loves (cover-ups) and if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life!

The Mueller report will be published right here at this link. Or, you know, the parts Bill Barr didn't cross out in order to protect Donald Trump. Even still, we don't think it's going to actually   exonerate Trump the way Barr says it will, at least partially because we don't think Trump and Republicans would be freaking the fuck out about the report's release so much if it did. As to how much info we'll actually get, that's unclear. It could be very limited, with just Mueller's decisions on prosecutions and declinations, or it could be much more extensive. The document itself is 400 pages long, plus exhibits, so we think we'll at least learn that REDACTED!

And we will, of course, be liveblogging it all day, and we imagine that liveblog will feature lots of ALL CAPS CUSSES and full paragraphs of text that just say A;SJKLFJ;IJ32IUJ;OJFAJDFI;JA;JMV;MCAMKDASJF;KLJAK;SDJFKAJDSF ADSMOTHERFUCKERWHATTEHFUCKISWRONGWITHTHESEGODDAMNEDFUCKINGCRIMINALSLOCKTHEMUPLOCKTHEMUPGRRRRRRARGHJ;KJAF;SDJJF;EAJ;FDJKF;JSCJA;KJDKSJL;KDJFKASA.

In other words, a normal day at Ye Olde Wonkette.

[ Just Security / Politico /  ibid  . ]

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