Bill Barr is ‘in open warfare’ with Mueller and plunging the Justice Dept into scandal: ex-DOJ official

Attorney General Bill Barr is now openly feuding with Robert Mueller's office in the wake of the special counsel's still-unreleased report on alleged collusion between Donald Trump and Russia, a former Justice Department official noted Thursday.

Matthew Miller, the former director for the DOJ's Office of Public Affairs, wrote in a Politico column Thursday that although Barr promised to be "truly independent," he's been anything but — and is furthering the politicization of the nation's top law enforcers.

"Barr is now in open warfare with the special counsel’s office," Miller wrote, noting that the attorney general's spokesperson pushed back on leaks from Mueller's office that criticized his decision to write "his own version of events" rather than release a summary of the report.

Barr's statement, the former DOJ official added, came after his "peculiar assertion last week that his initial four-page letter was not a summary of the special counsel’s conclusions, even though it was his own initial letter that said he was 'summariz[ing] the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.'"

The AG has also, Miller added, "moved the goal posts on what categories of information would be redacted from the report" by not asking courts for permission to release grand jury information, as had happened in two previous presidential misconduct investigations.

"Barr is neither inexperienced nor naive," Miller mused, "yet when deciding among the several options available to him when he received Mueller’s report, he chose the one course of action that would raise questions about his own integrity and plunge the Justice Department into political controversy."

Read the entire column via Politico.