Sorry, we're all lawyers here: "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated..." is not the same as "The investigation established that members of the the Trump Campaign did not conspire or coordinate..."

Ooh, that quoted sentence is not even a full sentence, do you see that? The T is bracketed which means in the original it was "the," small case, which means it is a part of a longer sentence and should have been preceded with ellipses. "The" did not lead the sentence, the quoted portion is a clause of a longer sentence. Barr knows that, Barr's a lawyer. Jesus, Barr, you couldn't even quote us one whole sentence?

"Election interference activities" are certainly the nettle of the Mueller investigation but not the full scope. Remember Rosey's enabling memo said ~~and things naturally flowing from Russian election interference activities?

About anything else? Did Mueller write anything about lifting sanctions? Undermining sanctions? Remember Flim Flam Flynn? Did Mueller write anything about the Trump Campaign and American foreign policy with Russia? For example, making it kinder and gentler, like, you know, in a quid pro quo?

Did Mueller write anything about Trump "activities" with any other country? Saudi Arabia? Remember the Mueller interviews of Saudis? Do I remember correctly that members of the Mueller team travelled to Saudi Arabia (I may not.)? I remember distinctly the Saudi branch to the Russian tree.

However that may be, Mueller and his lawyers wrote the one--incomplete--sentence quoted in the Barr's two paragraph Cliff Notes summary of however many pages the report dealt with Russia and those lawyers wrote "The investigation did not establish," not that "The investigation established that...did not." 

However, however: Can you prove a negative? Well...Yes. I have certainly read, hell, I have written close out memos stating, "The defendant did not commit a crime." You don't have to prove innocence--"exoneration"--but you damn sure can sometimes. That's what the Innocence Project does, right? Right.

But, and you will be relieved to know that this is my last Talmudic scholastic parsing--for tonight!--since Mueller's guys were all lawyers, for lawyers to write that "The investigation did not establish..." Establish? Yes, even lawyers in oral argument, in closing argument, will use "establish" synonymously with "proved," but that is loose speaking, "proved" is the legal term, "proved beyond a reasonable doubt," not "established," which is not a legal term and which pretty clearly means a lower standard than "proved beyond a reasonable doubt," that is the standard, and since this is a written report, and one that Mueller had been working on for months, for Mueller's lawyers to use a squishy non-legal phrase like "did not establish" suggests that they did not find evidence anywhere close to proof that Trump & Co. conspired or coordinated.