After months and years of being absolutely airtight, the Mueller team is slowly starting to leak in response to the media’s credulity in accepting the Barr whitewash. They’re making it known that the report is not an exoneration, that it looks bad for Trump, and that – critically – they explicitly prepared executive summaries and abstracts that could be quickly or immediately made public and were not.
It’s not surprising. We all knew that Barr was there for one reason: stonewall the report. And while it might seem surprising that a credulous media bought the spin without question, why wouldn’t they? After all, “there was nothing to see here” is not only an exoneration of Trump, but of their own indolence in failing to pursue or report on this. If there was no collusion and no obstruction, then they can’t have been asleep at the switch, right?
Which is why the clapback is coming now. And loudly. The press in this country has either been complicit or afraid of its own shadow, and at some point any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. The first duty of journalism was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That includes comfortable journalists.