Both CNN and The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation could wrap up as soon as next week.
While this could just mean that Mueller’s work is finished, Rachel Maddow dropped a chilling warning that Donald Trump’s new attorney general William Barr could be behind the special counsel’s sudden conclusion.
“Less than one week into the tenure of President Trump’s new attorney general William Barr, it’s over,” the MSNBC host said. “William Barr knows that’s what he was hired to do.”
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Rachel Maddow floats a chilling theory about why the Mueller investigation is reportedly wrapping up as early as next week. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/iWdmBa9XBl
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) February 21, 2019
Maddow said:
Less than one week into the tenure of President Trump’s new attorney general William Barr, it’s over. The Mueller investigation is being wrapped up as soon as next week, as soon as Monday. Time’s up. … So maybe this is just another stone on this long, dumb path of people saying Mueller is done. We’ve been hearing that forever. This absolutely could be that. It could also be, on the other hand, on the other range of possibility, it could be that attorney general William Barr has just shut it down. William Barr was hired to be attorney general, A. Because there was a vacancy. Why was there a vacancy? Because Trump fired Jeff Sessions as the previous attorney general. Why did trump fire Jeff Sessions as the previous attorney general? Well, what he said about it out loud for months is that Jeff Sessions wouldn’t shut down the Russia investigation, so that made him a terrible attorney general. So William Barr knows that’s what he was hired to do.
Did Trump’s AG shut down the Mueller investigation?
Since the special counsel investigation was launched, Trump has not even tried to hide his efforts to undermine it, whether it was pressuring witnesses or attacking its credibility via Twitter.
He has openly admitted that he wanted to fire Jeff Sessions because he didn’t protect him by shutting down the Russia investigation. Now, just days after William Barr was sworn in as the new attorney general, the special counsel investigation is reportedly over.
While it could be a coincidence and Mueller may just be finishing on his own terms, some Trump loyalists believed this is exactly what would happen after William Barr took over as attorney general.
Tomorrow will be the first day that President Trump will have a fully operational confirmed Attorney General. Let that sink in. Mueller will be gone soon.
— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) February 14, 2019
Ultimately, the American people have no reason to trust this administration or this Justice Department. The president has made it clear all along that he believes the DOJ is there to protect him.
In other words, the final Mueller report shouldn’t just be made public, but so should the circumstances surrounding its completion.
After nearly two years of a special counsel investigation into whether the president is essentially a Russian asset, it’s critical that the American people can trust the end result.
As of right now, Donald Trump hasn’t given them much reason to.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
