Yes, Trump Obstructed Justice. And William Barr Is Helping Him Cover It Up.

This language doesn’t even bother to exonerate Trump’s associate Roger Stone, who during the campaign was in cahoots with WikiLeaks as it dumped Russian-hacked emails that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Barr’s statements only pertain to the Russian government, not Russian individuals or WikiLeaks or anyone else. This is a crucial distinction, given that we know the Trump campaign knew of and encouraged Stone’s coordination with WikiLeaks.

In his testimony to Congress, Cohen revealed that Stone called Trump around July 19, 2016, to tell him about the upcoming WikiLeaks dump. “Wouldn’t that be nice,” Cohen describes Trump responding. After the July 22 release of the emails, “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed,” Stone’s indictment describes, without saying who did the directing, “to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had on the Clinton campaign. In October 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, deflecting attention away from a damning video showing Trump making sexually abusive comments; in response, “an associate of [a] high-ranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to STONE that read ‘well done,’” the indictment says.

More importantly, Barr’s letter doesn’t address something else Mueller investigated: whether a series of exchanges between Trump’s campaign and Russians amounted to a crime. The sworn testimony of Trump’s aides reveal that, at least through June 2016, he continued to pursue a $300 million real estate deal in Moscow that required Vladimir Putin’s assistance. While hoping to land that deal, Trump’s son, Don Jr., took a meeting with some Russians offering dirt on Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” At the end of the meeting, Don Jr. said his father would consider sanctions relief for Russia if he won.

Then, on August 2, 2016, in the same meeting where Manafort gave Kilimnik polling data, he discussed a “peace” deal in Ukraine that would also amount to sanctions relief for the Russians. Finally, after he was elected but before he was president, Trump undercut President Obama’s response to the Russian hacks, suggesting that he would give Russia sanctions relief.

The hack-and-leak is not the crime Trump may have committed. It is, instead, a quid pro quo deal by which Russia would help Trump win and Trump would relieve Russia of the sanctions imposed for engaging in human rights violations, annexing Crimea, and hacking the election to help Trump win.

In deciding that Trump didn’t obstruct justice after a paltry 48 hours of review, Barr “concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” He came to this conclusion—in spite of saying during his confirmation hearings that what Trump is known to have done amounts to obstruction—because Mueller found that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”

That’s not the crime that, the evidence quite clearly shows, Trump may have committed. This is not the crime that Manafort appears to have lied about in hopes of getting a pardon.

In giving Trump the all-clear on obstruction charges, Barr appears not to have considered whether Trump obstructed the actual crime in question. He instead considered whether the president obstructed a different crime. This is the legal sleight of hand that has allowed Barr to proclaim that Trump will not be charged.

The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee now has abundant reason to get all the underlying materials from the Mueller inquiry, because the attorney general just cleared the president of something he agreed constituted a crime just a few months ago.