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Over the past 24 hours, a new line of attack has emerged from liberals upset about how the Mueller investigation appears to be turning out. Some of them are livid at Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, asking: How can we trust a Trump appointee to fairly represent its findings?

If Mueller found a shred of evidence proving that Trump conspired or coordinated with a dictatorial foreign adversary to compromise the basis of our republic, I’d want the facts unearthed and perhaps Trump bounced out of office in a heartbeat. But I’m also a patriot who would prefer that an elected president — even one I often disagree with — is not a traitor and is not removed from office in an angry coup.

So sure, it’s worth taking Barr’s letter with a grain of salt. But we also have to be honest about how limited this caveat truly is.

Barr’s hands were pretty much tied when it came to how much time he had to release his summary. The media spent the better part of two years promising that the Mueller report would spell the end of the Trump administration, and if Barr held on to it for too long without disclosing anything, allegations of a cover-up would surely have emerged.

And this is not Barr’s first rodeo. He’s hardly a Trump shill — he backed “Jeb!” in the primaries. Barr cut his teeth as a tough-on-crime prosecutor during the first Bush administration, first as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, then as deputy AG.

Bush then appointed Barr as his AG. Congress unanimously approved his confirmation in hearings described by the LA Times as “unusually placid.” He followed his tenure at the Justice Department with the standard corporate-counsel college circuit and led a relatively uncontroversial life until Trump flailed in his search to replace former AG Jeff Sessions.

Trump reportedly chose Barr specifically because Barr’s establishment credentials would make his confirmation possible. Until then, polarizing figures such as Pam Bondi and Chris Christie were being floated by the Trump team. Barr was the safe, “cuckservative” pick, the one who had been just critical enough of the Mueller team to garner Trump’s respect but not so sycophantic as to lose pivotal votes from purple state Senate democrats like Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

So we have an establishment intelligence figure more detested by Sen. Ron Paul, R-Ky., than by Joe Biden, who lauded Barr during his AG confirmation hearings. And perhaps even more importantly, we have an establishment intelligence figure who’s close, personal friends with Robert Mueller himself.

Sure, Barr could have sugarcoated the Mueller report in his summary with the intention of never revealing it to the public, perhaps equivocating around Trump’s malfeasance in the bet that no one in the entire Justice Department would leak Barr’s embellishments to the press. But doesn’t that seem like a bit of a gamble? Mueller would know if Barr is misrepresenting the truth, and surely that would make their wives’ Bible study quite awkward.

And isn’t that reputational risk not justifiable, considering the reward would be to protect a president who hasn’t proven deeply pivotal in Barr’s career? If anything, Barr did Trump more of a favor in agreeing to take over the messiest department of his presidency than the reverse. It’s not as though, prior to December, Barr’s career wasn’t already a notable success.

Again, anything is possible, and there’s nothing wrong with a little skepticism when the stakes are as high as they are with the Mueller report. But the notion that Barr had ample motive to spin the truth for Trump isn’t just misguided. It’s downright laughable.