ATTORNEY GENERAL/INVESTIGATIONS/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When the Mueller report was made public this spring, Attorney General William P. Barr seemed to try to blunt its findings, playing them down in an early summary and defending President Trump at a news conference just before its release. On Monday [12-9-19], when the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, rejected one of Mr. Trump’s main attacks on the F.B.I. and declared the bureau had adequate reason to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Mr. Barr again stepped in, issuing a statement saying that the F.B.I. instead should not have opened the investigation in 2016…In both cases, Mr. Barr highlighted his belief that law enforcement officials overstepped their authority when they decided to investigate Trump campaign aides and that the president ultimately did nothing wrong.”
-Katie Benner, “Barr and Durham Publicly Disagree With Horowitz Report on Russia Inquiry,” The New York Times online, December 9, 2019