‘Very disappointed’: DOJ spokeswoman slams Chuck Todd’s ‘deceptive editing’ of Barr remarks on Flynn case
by Dominick Mastrangelo | May 10
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice is accusing NBC’s Chuck Todd of deliberately editing a clip of Attorney General William Barr to cast him in a negative light.
“Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by @ChuckTodd on @MeetThePress on AG Barr’s CBS interview,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec tweeted Sunday. “Compare the two transcripts below. 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.”
Kupec shared the transcript of a portion of that morning’s Meet the Press, during which Todd asked Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan about recent remarks Barr made regarding the now-dropped case against former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Micheal Flynn.
NBC News showed the panel a clip from Barr’s CBS interview last week, which included only the first two sentences of his response when he was asked how history would look back on his department’s move to dismiss the case against Flynn.
<blockquote><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by <a href=”https://twitter.com/chucktodd?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@ChuckTodd</a> on <a href=”https://twitter.com/MeetThePress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@MeetThePress</a> on AG Barr’s CBS interview. <br><br>Compare the two transcripts below. 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.
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“Well, history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history,” Barr said in the clip NBC showed.
“I was struck, Peggy, 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,” Todd reacted. “He was almost admitting that, yeah, this is a political job.”
In his full response, however, Barr continued, “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.”
Critics of Barr have argued his decision to drop the charges against Flynn is just the latest in a slew of politically-motivated moves to either protect or keep scrutiny away from President Trump. Barr has been critical of the counterintelligence investigation that led to Flynn’s ouster and conviction for lying to FBI investigators.
Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by @ChuckTodd on @MeetThePress on AG Barr’s CBS interview.
Compare the two transcripts below. 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. pic.twitter.com/PR1ciceMmE
— KerriKupecDOJ (@KerriKupecDOJ) May 10, 2020
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