Despite Barr's intervention, we still aren't done

My last entry was written before William Barr summarized Robert Mueller's report for Congressional leaders.

Since then, of course, Barr's later top-line finding — that Don Trumpone didn't conspire with the Russian government to throw the 2016 election — has dominated the news. Trump supporters celebrate it and demand that the rest of us move on.

Hold on a sec.

First, we have not seen Mueller's report. We have only heard Barr's summary of it.

Second, according to Barr, Mueller didn't feel he could come to a conclusion on whether Don Trumpone obstructed justice. Nevertheless, Barr's letter to Congressional leaders declared,

The Special Counsel's decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime.

Why did Barr believe he had to decide?

A little history sets the question in its proper context. By the time of Watergate, the Justice Department had already established its policy that a sitting president could not be indicted. That meant that the results of the grand jury investigation into the scandal could not result in an indictment even if the facts warranted. Yet it would have been perverse if the grand jury findings had simply disappeared into a file cabinet. So with the permission of a judge (grand jury proceedings are normally not made public), the findings were shared with Congress. The reasoning was, if the findings warranted action, only Congress could take it.

If Mueller didn't feel he could definitively state whether or not Don Trumpone obstructed justice, it might well have been because he felt bound by the aforementioned Justice Department policy. That, in turn, would mean only Congress could decide what to do with Mueller's findings.

Even if that's not the reason Mueller did not issue a finding on obstruction of justice, the fact remains that he didn't. So, again, why did Barr? Why did Barr feel the need to do so? And again, if Mueller couldn't decide, how could Barr after spending only forty-eight hours with the data Mueller spent twenty-two months gathering and pondering?

As far as I can tell, Barr improperly substituted his own judgment for that of Mueller and Congress.

The only way for the rest of us to know whether Barr behaved improperly is for him to release Mueller's entire report. The version for public consumption likely will have to be redacted in part, but an unredacted version must be made available to appropriate members of Congress.

And yes, we still have our homework to do. We have to read Mueller's final report for ourselves.