DOJ releases Barr transcript after skewed NBC report

FPI / May 13, 2020

NBC’s Chuck Todd deceptively edited a sound bite from Attorney General William Barr to make it appear as if Barr had said nothing about upholding the rule of law in dismissing the case against Michael Flynn, when in fact he did, the Department of Justice said.

DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec tweeted a transcript of last week’s CBS interview with Barr alongside Todd’s comments Sunday on “Meet the Press,” saying she was “very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary.”

Todd played an excerpt of the interview with CBS’s Catherine Herridge in which Barr was asked how history would view his effort to dismiss the charges against Flynn, who briefly served as President Donald Trump's national security adviser.

In the excerpt played by Todd, the attorney general said: “Well, history’s written by the winners. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

Todd followed up by saying that he was struck by “the cynicism of the answer. It’s a correct answer. But he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this is a political job.”

Kupec pointed out that the the NBC host left out the rest of the attorney general’s response, in which Barr referred specifically to the rule of law.

Barr’s full answer was: “Well, history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history. But I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It helped, it upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.”

Kupec asked readers to compare the two transcripts. “Not only did the AG make the case in the VERY answer Chuck says he didn’t, he also did so multiple times throughout the interview,” she tweeted.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” responded late Sunday in a tweet: "You’re correct. Earlier today, we inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr before offering commentary and analysis. The remaining clip included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed, and we regret the error."

Free Press International