In today’s era of online news and quick diffusion of information, it is extremely easy to distort anything to fit your agenda.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to Attorney General William “Bill” Barr was immediately the subject of interest. Several reputable sources such as the Washinton Post and Vox have released stories about how Mr. Mueller was complaining about how the summary misled and lied to people.

But that’s without context. The pro-Trump subreddit r/The_Donald released a picture criticizing the WaPo article, saying that it wasn’t Mr. Barr that had misled the public, but the media representation of it.

However, Mr. Mueller’s letter is quite confusing upon initial reading.

“… the introductions and executive summaries of out two-volume report accurately summarize the Office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”

Mr. Barr reportedly talked to Robert Mueller on the phone about the letter, in which he later said:

“My view of events was that there was a lot of criticism of the special counsel for the ensuing few days, and on Thursday [March 28] I got this letter,” Barr said. “And when I talked to the special counsel about the letter, my understanding was his concern was not the accuracy of the statement of the findings in my letter but that he wanted more out there to provide additional context to explain his reasoning on why he didn’t reach a decision on obstruction.”

Politifact has proven that the Attorney General really did speak with Mr. Mueller on the phone.  We don’t, of course, know what was said, but since the story checks out and the proffered explanation of the letter is not implausible, we have no reason to suspect that the conversation didn’t go as Barr alleges.