Based in part upon Barr’s statement, the president is peddling a fantasy that serves his political ends. Congress cannot permit this lie to obstruct accountability. This is why Barr must release the full Mueller report, as well as testify before the Judiciary Committee.

That second part of the equation is essential. Barr, who has a history of taking a dim view of efforts to hold presidents to account, wrote a memo last year (before Trump nominated him to replace Jeff Sessions) in which he complained about the Mueller inquiry and a “fatally misconceived” theory of how President Trump might have obstructed justice. Now, as the man Trump tapped to serve as attorney general, Barr is giving Trump a pass.

That’s an issue that cannot be allowed to get lost amid all the wrangling and pontificating over this report. As former White House counsel John Dean noted on Sunday, “Having re-read William Barr’s June 2018 Memo critiquing Mueller’s obstruction investigation and now his summary of Mueller’s Report, it is clear that Richard Nixon would not have been forced to resign his office if Barr had been Attorney General. Barr wants a POTUS above the law.”

Nadler, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chair Adam B. Schiff, and Committee on Oversight and Reform chair Elijah E. Cummings have responded appropriately. “After reading the Attorney General’s four-page summary of the Special Counsel’s findings, we reiterate our call for the release of the Special Counsel’s full and complete report and all underlying documents. We also call for Attorney General Barr to come forward to testify before the House Judiciary Committee without delay,” they announced on Sunday. “Far from the ‘total exoneration’ claimed by the President, the Mueller report expressly does not exonerate the President. Instead, it ‘sets out evidence on both sides of the question’ of obstruction—including the evidence that President Trump attempted to obstruct justice.”

The key committee chairs are right: “It is unacceptable that, after Special Counsel Mueller spent 22 months meticulously uncovering this evidence, Attorney General Barr made a decision not to charge the President in under 48 hours. The Attorney General did so without even interviewing the President. His unsolicited, open memorandum to the Department of Justice, suggesting that the obstruction investigation was ‘fatally misconceived,’ calls into question his objectivity on this point in particular.”