A 
email
email
Monday, March 25, 2019
“This Is Good For Trump — If Barr Is Representing Things Fairly,” my editor Micah suggested as the headline for this column when we were talking over whether I should write something on Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
After nearly two years of watching and waiting, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is finally complete. Attorney General William Barr announced on Friday that Mueller has submitted his confidential report, summarizing key information from the investigation.
In a letter to Congress summarizing the results of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Attorney General William Barr wrote that the special counsel found that the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Russia. On the question of obstruction of justice, though, Mueller didn’t come to a conclusion, stating that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” The ball is now in Congress’s court, so you can expect a political fight in the coming days and weeks to make the full contents of the report public.
One big question, now that special counsel Robert Mueller has filed his report, is what the process of revealing Mueller’s findings will mean politically, which is a separate question from what additional legal issues might emerge. It may take a true bombshell — like, perhaps, a conclusion that the president did obstruct justice, or a full and explicit exoneration of the president from Mueller — to change Democrats’ and Republicans’ minds about how favorably they view Mueller and how trustworthy they find him.
Shortly before killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques, the man arrested for the Christchurch massacre posted an online manifesto that alluded to the “Great Replacement” — a racist demographic theory that stokes fears of white people becoming, effectively, extinct. Within hours of the shootings, this act of terrorism inspired by a conspiracy theory had already gone on to birth conspiracy theories about itself. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh speculated that the shooter was a secret leftist hoping to use the attack to smear the reputation of the political right.
