Bill Barr gets smeared for refusing to duck and cover like Loretta Lynch.

Washington pile-ons are never pretty, but this week’s political setup of Attorney General William Barr is disreputable even by Beltway standards. Democrats and the media are turning the AG into a villain for doing his duty and making the hard decisions that special counsel Robert Mueller abdicated. Mr. Barr’s Wednesday testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee was preceded late Tuesday by the leak of a letter Mr. Mueller had sent the AG on March 27. Mr. Mueller griped in the letter that Mr. Barr’s four-page explanation to Congress of the principal conclusions of the Mueller report on March 24 “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the Mueller team’s “work and conclusions.” Only in Washington could this exercise in posterior covering be puffed into a mini-outrage.

Mr. Mueller’s complaining letter admits that Mr. Barr’s letter wasn’t inaccurate, a fact Mr. Barr says Mr. Mueller also conceded in a subsequent phone call. The Mueller complaint, rather, was that there was “public confusion about critical aspects” of his investigation. Translation: Republicans were claiming vindication for Donald Trump, and Mr. Mueller was taking hits in the press for not nailing the worst President in history. Having been hailed for months as a combination of Eliot Ness and St. Thomas More, Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors seem to have been unnerved by some bad press clips.

More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):