About

#BillBarrLetters refers to a series of social media posts featuring extremely condescended and abridged versions of famous stories. These posts are intended to criticize Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the FBI's investigation into President Donald Trump.

Origin

On March 24th, 2019, United States Attorney General Willaim Barr delivered a four-page summary of the Mueller Report, which as Barr reported, concluded that the FBI had found no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Days later, on March 27th, 2019, journalist and blogger Josh Marshall tweeted ^[1] a parody of the summary, comparing it to an abridged version of the William Shakespeare play Hamlet in which the entire plot is removed. He wrote, "Bill Barr letter on Hamlet: Prince never returns to school after unplanned trip to Denmark." The post received more than 1,100 retweets and 5,400 likes.

Following a suggestion from Twitter^[4] user @PeteBuddhaJudge about using the hashtag "#BillBarrLetters," Marshall used the tag in the tweet about an abridged version of the fantasy novel The Hobbit (shown below).

Spread

Throughout the day, others shared variations of the parodies, replacing plot summaries of famous works with abridged versions that remove any negative ideas, feelings or plot points (examples below).

Several media outlets reported on the hashtag inluding the Hill,^[2] The Daily Dot ^[3] and more.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References