Dissatisfied with media coverage of the results of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote a letter to Attorney General William Barr in late March expressing frustration that Barr's four-page memo to Congress summarizing Mueller's findings "did not fully capture [their] context, nature, and substance."
That's according to The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the letter on Tuesday. The Post did not publish the letter in full, which means we are relying here on their interpretation of a letter that supposedly complains about Barr's interpretation of Mueller's report. From The Post:
The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president. Democrats in Congress are likely to scrutinize Mueller's complaints to Barr as they contemplate the prospect of opening impeachment proceedings and mull how hard to press for Mueller himself to testify publicly. At the time Mueller's letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said that Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge. Days after Barr's announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions. "The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions," Mueller wrote. "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."
According to The Post, the two men talked on the phone after Barr received the letter, and this conversation was friendlier in nature.
Barr is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Barr previously testified that he didn't know whether Mueller supported his conclusions.
Update: The Mueller letter is now available here.
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