Would A Reasonable Member Of Congress Feel Mislead By Barr's Letter? Yes
Benjamin Wittes is the famously careful publisher of the Lawfare blog, and was hopeful that Bill Barr would be a good attorney general. Not anymore, as we saw on Morning Joe today.
"Benjamin, I want to ask you if President Trump's Roy Cohn, as I call him, William Barr, may have committed perjury when answering Charlie Crist. Crist asked if there had been frustration that the report had not been properly and fully characterized in the Barr letter," Joe Scarborough said.
"As you know, perjury is a sort of ridiculously technical statute, and it requires a very precise parsing of the exact question and the exact answer and all the possible things that that answer could convey," Wittes said.
"So I don't think we're realistically talking in that land at all. I think we are talking in a different land, which is, you know, would a reasonable member of Congress feel grossly misled by what the attorney general said? I think the answer to that is yes. You know, the attorney general sitting on a letter that the special counsel had written, expressing frustration with the way he had characterized it and the way that had spurred a media storm storm, asked a question about, you know, 'what can you tell us about frustration?', kind of scratches his head and plays dumb. I think people are going to feel misled by that."
"Misled. Also, certainly, could that not be considered an abuse of power, if you use your position to, quote, undermine the central purpose for which the Justice Department appointed the special counsel?" Scarborough asked.