Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said the latest leak of a letter from Special Counsel Robert Mueller to Attorney General William Barr was meant to “maximize the embarrassment” to Barr and frame the questioning for the next two days of Congressional hearings.
The letter, according to the Washington Post, expressed Mueller’s frustration with Barr’s description of his findings. However, the Post also reports that when Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought his memo to Congress was inaccurate, “Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation.”
“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” the letter states, according to the Post. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Dept. appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
Gingrich said “I assume somebody wanted to leak [Mueller’s letter] to maximize the embarrassment to Barr and to set up the questions for the hearings the next two days. Look, the Deep State in Washington has played these games for the whole history of the country,” he said.
He continued, “After all the noise you just shrug your shoulders and say, ‘so what?’ Mueller had every opportunity to come out the day that Barr released his letter. Mueller could have at any point decided to refute it and as I understand the actual key sentences, the distortion is by the news media. The distortion is not by Barr,”
“Think about this. The media that Mueller is complaining about are the people who are now using Mueller’s complaint to further distort what is going on. You couldn’t make this up,” he said.
