Speaking in Martian: William Barr's Truthful but Deceptive Spin on the Mueller Investigation

Mars, NASA photo

Politicians often speak in Martian. What I mean is that they often say things that are literally true but which mislead the listener. Unfortunately, Attorney General William Barr has shown himself to be an expert at speaking in Martian.

Truth and accuracy are not the same. Journalism students are taught that reports must be both true and accurate. Accuracy is truth plus fairness. That is, a report must not only be factually true but it must also give a correct impression. This is a stricter sense of accuracy than what we encounter in politics. Literal truth is vital but it is not enough. People violate basic principles of honesty when they rip statements and events out of context or commit lies of omission to create a misleading impression. A famous and particularly loathsome example occurred during the 2000 South Carolina primary, when an unknown group called voters asking whether they would vote for Senator John McCain if they knew that he was the father of an illegitimate black child. The calls omitted that Senator McCain and his wife had adopted a wonderful girl from South Asia. The question gave the impression of nefarious sexual activity, while the truth, once understood in context, placed McCain in a very favorable light. Accuracy is always more than just truth.

William Barr, DOJ

Attorney General William Barr published a four-page memo on March 24, 2019 in which he purported to summarize the results of an investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Barr noted, truthfully, that “the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.” With respect to obstruction of justice, Barr’s memo truthfully said that the Special Counsel “did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – is whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.”

I think that everyone has pretty much acknowledged that the things that Barr said in his memo were true, but it has become obvious that they were, in a journalist’s sense, wildly inaccurate. Barr cherry-picked information from the Special Counsel’s report that supported the president’s innocence while either ignoring or downplaying information that was unfavorable. Quoting Mueller out of context, he omitted much information that made President Trump and his campaign look bad.

Examples of material from the Special Counsel’s report that Barr slighted include such statements as these: “The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” Without belaboring the issue, that is far short of the complete exoneration that the Barr memo seemed to indicate. With respect to obstruction of justice, the Mueller report specifically did not exonerate President Trump, but referred the matter to Congress. This, again, Barr omitted.

Selection from Mueller's letter to Barr

Special Counsel Robert Mueller was troubled enough to write a detailed response pointing out that the introductions to the sections of his report were intended for immediate release to the public and that Barr’s summary memo did “not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the department on the morning of March 25.” Mueller complained, quite rightly, that “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 ensure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

Like many politicians, Barr wrote in Martian. He said things that were factually true but extremely misleading. He omitted key information that the public would need to know. He interpreted the report in terms that were enormously more favorable to President Trump and his campaign than what the facts in the report indicated. He did not do this by speaking falsely but by omitting context.

Attorney General Barr surely knew that the public would become aware of his perfidy once the entire report was released. Yet he repeated many of his misleading conclusions in his opening speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he delieverd after the release of an edited version of the Mueller report. Why did he do it? This will be the topic of my next blog post.