New York, May 2 (CNN) : In the wake of a bombshell revelation that special counsel Robert Mueller took issuewith the way William Barr described his Russia probe's findings, the attorney general came to Capitol Hill to testify about his handling of the 448-page Mueller report in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary committee, has stood out over the first two-plus years of Donald Trump's time in the White House for his drastic about-face on the President. The South Carolina senator went from calling Trump a "kook" who was unfit for office during the 2016 GOP primary to being one of the President's biggest advocates and allies in Congress.

Graham kept up his pro-Trump work during his opening statement on Wednesday. He incorrectly said that Mueller asked Barr to make a conclusion about whether or not Trump had obstructed justice in his actions related to the special counsel probe; Mueller did not do that at all -- simply not making a recommendation of his own about Trump and obstruction, noting that the Office of Legal Counsel made clear a sitting president could not be charged.

Then Graham turned to a favorite subject of the President: The text messages -- badmouthing Trump -- between then-FBI official Peter Strzok and Lisa Page during the 2016 election. Graham promised an investigation into those text messages as well as into the origins of the FBI's counter-intelligence probe -- up to and including questions about the FISA warrant granted the FBI to surveil Carter Page. As many people on Twitter quickly noted, if name-calling Trump during the 2016 election was a crime, then Graham himself would be in jail right now.

Now that we know that Mueller took issue with the way that Barr described the report in his summary letter on March 24, the AG sought to re-classify what he meant to do with the letter. He compared it to offering a verdict in a trial, with the transcript of the proceedings (the Mueller report) to come out later. Barr said that public interest was such -- and the stakes were so high -- that he felt the need to offer the summary or verdict immediately after receiving the report.

To hear Barr tell it then, what happened with his letter was all a big misunderstanding. ("We were not trying to summarize the report," Barr told the Judiciary committee on Wednesday.) It was never meant to fully categorize the nature of Mueller's investigations, according to Barr; that misunderstanding is why Mueller wasn't thrilled with Barr's letter.