AG Barr Makes Major Mueller Report Announcement

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Concerned members of Congress and the public are currently waiting for their chance to get a copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on his Russia investigation — but not before the White House gets a chance to claim executive privilege over any portions it wants, according to Attorney General William Barr. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) revealed Barr had explained the plan to him this week, sharing at the same time that the full planned review process would likely take “weeks, not months.”

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Barr released a terse, four-page summary of the no doubt lengthy report this past Sunday, two days after its initial submission. He explained that Mueller had found no evidence of criminally prosecutable cooperation or coordination between members of the Trump team and Russia and that he’d declined to make a traditional final judgment on the question of possible presidential obstruction of justice. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stepped in via Barr’s summary letter to declare the president innocent of the charges — but there remains a whole host of questions.

 

For one, Barr had long established his opposition to the idea of prosecuting Trump for obstruction of justice, submitting a memo to that effect to the Justice Department before he was ever nominated for his present position — so how closely did he actually look at the facts when making his final determination? What all did Mueller uncover on the question and its concurrent issue of the president’s team’s connections with Russia?

House Democrats have clearly established their intention to get those and many related questions answered. Half a dozen House chairpersons set a deadline of April 2 for the submission of the full report from the Justice Department, and a couple of them like the Judiciary Committee’s Jerry Nadler and Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff have indicated they’re ready to take steps like hosting Mueller for testimony and appealing disclosure decisions all the way to the Supreme Court.

President Trump for his part, said he “doesn’t mind” if the public sees the Mueller report but at the same time, he derided “somebody writing a report who never got a vote” after he won one of the “greatest elections of all time in the history of this country.” To be clear, the final count in the electoral college has nothing to do with the Mueller report. In other words, it’s a hit or miss whether Trump will decide to be oh-so-gracious enough with the truth to go light on the redactions or decide that Barr is in on the conspiracy too and redact the whole thing.

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In the past, the president’s team has established their clear precedent for clamping down on the truth via vague claims of “executive privilege,” even enraging Republicans at one point when former Trump adviser Steve Bannon refused to answer most of their questions during a meeting with the House Intelligence Committee. More recently, Trump insisted that the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) should have run the allegations he was part of a wide-ranging global electoral conspiracy by him before alerting authorities. That’s just not how it works, but Trump still gets to have a say in what the public sees in the Mueller report anyway…

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