A redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report is slated to be released on Thursday, and it has many analysts and experts weighing in. Among those is lawyer George Conway, who said the Mueller report quote everyone should be looking for has already been released — at least, in part.
On Sunday, Conway shared a tweet written by CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, which highlighted a line from Attorney General William Barr's formal summary of the Mueller report: "As the report states: ‘[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.'"
Honig, who shared the now-infamous line, questioned whether the first word in that sentence might actually be "although," given that the first letter is bracketed, signifying a grammatical placeholder. Conway's response on Sunday indicated that he thinks that one quote from Barr's summary could carry a lot of meaning.
In sharing Honig's tweet, Conway added his own advice. "Look for these words," he wrote. In other words, Conway advised on Twitter, those reading the report should look for the line in the Mueller report which Barr quoted in his summary.
Conway, for his part, is married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. He has made a name for himself as a fierce critic of President Donald Trump, even though Trump is technically his wife's boss.
Recently, the pair went toe-to-toe, when Trump responded to Conway's fairly regular criticisms on Twitter.
"George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted," Trump wrote. "I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!"
The argument stemmed from Conway's commentary on the president's mental health. While that tussle appears to have since blown over, Conway's criticism of the president has continued.
As for the Mueller report, no one in the public knows exactly what it contains. In the summary Barr released, the Attorney General said that the report concluded there was no collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. Mueller, according to Barr, left the decision of whether or not to pursue obstruction of justice charges up to him. Barr wrote that he, in conjunction with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, opted not to do so.
Since Barr's summary was released, speculation about the remaining details has all but dominated political discourse. And one of the largest mysteries concerns redactions. Reuters reports that Barr plans to color-code the information he redacts in the version of the report that will be released later this week, based on why each piece was blacked out.
Still, as Reuters reports, Barr has wide authority insofar as deciding what information is released to the public and what information is withheld. While the public may be able to search for the one quote Conway highlighted, its relative importance may depend on what around it is — or isn't — redacted.
