For now, at least, there remains a strong contingent of Trump-Russia truthers who are determined to squeeze every last ounce of click juice they can from the Mueller story before it turns rancid. In this crowd, the most popular theory of the moment is that Barr’s summary of the Mueller report—which has not been released to the public—is part of a sinister “cover-up” to protect the president.
The liberal website TruthOut.org denounced the attorney general’s letter as “another salvo in a disinformation campaign that has lasted two years.” The Other 98%, a partisan Facebook page with more than 6 million followers, questioned how Barr could have even read the report in “less than 48 hours” when “it’s thousands of pages long.” (The report’s length is, in fact, unknown.) Addicting Info, another widely followed liberal Facebook page, shared a story with a headline designed to keep the hype going: “Republicans Walk Back Support for Transparency in Mueller Report, Could Mean Trump Is in Big Trouble.”
Some of this skepticism is understandable, of course. It’s entirely possible—even likely—that the full Mueller report contains damning, previously unknown details about President Donald Trump that are not reflected in Barr’s relatively brief summary. We’ll know for sure if and when the report is made public. But if the attorney general was dramatically mischaracterizing its contents in the meantime, it seems unlikely he’d go unchallenged by those in the know.
Read: The critical part of Mueller’s report that Barr didn’t mention
Which is why the savviest resistance content producers are experimenting with creative messaging pivots. Occupy Democrats, for example, served its 7 million Facebook followers an old photo on Monday of Trump and O. J. Simpson, accompanied by the sarcastic message, “BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW IF YOU’RE NOT CONVICTED, YOU’RE NOT GUILTY.”
On Twitter, meanwhile, some of the most prolific Trump-Russia conspiracists have kept busy this week reassuring their readers that the president and his team remain in grave legal peril—just as they’ve been promising.
Eric Garland—the corporate consultant of “It’s time for some game theory” fame—has hinted that new revelations of high-profile crimes are imminent, pointing to the existence of sealed indictments in Washington, D.C., and Virginia as evidence. (Barr’s letter says Mueller did not “obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public.”)
Seth Abramson, a professor at the University of New Hampshire who has attracted more than 600,000 Twitter followers with breathless legal analysis and confident predictions such as “Bob Mueller will hunt both Trump and Pence to the ends of the Earth to secure impeachment and conviction,” was apparently undeterred by the weekend’s news. He has spent recent days churning out long, complex Twitter threads; plugging his book, Proof of Conspiracy; and directing fans to his featured interview in Playboy. “The Mueller investigation is not something that will conclude in the way that we think of investigations concluding,” he explained, helpfully, to Politico magazine. “It will simply transform.”