Tipsheet

'Journalism Has Lost All Standards': Here's Why WSJ Columnist Strassel Torched The NYT Over Their Mueller Story

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  April 17, 2019 12:40 PM

The Mueller report drops tomorrow. The long wait is over, but it’s not. You know Democrats aren’t going to be happy. You know they want the grand jury evidence to be released, which isn’t going to happen. You know the legion of morons that is the Democratic Party will continue to peddle the Russian collusion myth, along with Attorney General William Barr is a pro-Trump political operative. Oh, and Trump himself is an agent of the Kremlin. This will be amplified, though the ending will be the same: the Left eating crap again over the lack of evidence to prove Russian collusion. As for the obstruction of justice, there was no crime. There cannot be obstruction. Those peddling this shoddy talking point are already anti-Trump clowns, so I will take the fact that Mueller and DAG Rosenstein punting on this issue as a sign: there’s not enough there. 

Obviously, there are members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team who weren’t happy with Barr’s summary that exposed that this two-year witch-hunt dredged up nothing. Also, who cares about the other indictments and convictions; all of them were unrelated to Russian collusion. Paul Manafort was sentenced for tax evasion. Trump has some bad dudes in his inner circle. Who cares? This is politics. Only the sadistic and psychopathic rise to the top—and I’m totally okay with that. We won. We beat Hillary. That’s all that matters, but in the weeks leading to Tax Day, The New York Times peddled a story that tried to drum up Russian collusion hysteria again (via NYT):

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.

Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.

[…]

The officials and others interviewed declined to flesh out why some of the special counsel’s investigators viewed their findings as potentially more damaging for the president than Mr. Barr explained, although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. It was unclear how much discussion Mr. Mueller and his investigators had with senior Justice Department officials about how their findings would be made public. It was also unclear how widespread the vexation is among the special counsel team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel.

Oh, so they just didn’t like it. That’s not news. Also, we’re not even clear what they’re pissed about. Maybe it has to do with the fact that these investigators who were die-hard Democrats couldn’t deliver for their party. I know some conservatives noted this as a problem throughout the whole investigation. I was okay with it; the most partisan Democrats dug and dug and couldn’t find anything to torpedo this White House. This gives the report more credibility. The Left can’t pivot to the ‘well, there were Republicans on staff’ talking point. But The Wall Street Journal’sKimberley Strassel ripped the Times, noting that this story just proves once again the total abandonment on journalistic standards. How many so-called associates were pissed about the summary? How high up did they go? It was a nothing burger, which is why this story didn’t go far. Then again, expect pandemonium tomorrow.