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Devlin Barrett
A journalist specializing in national security and law enforcement
The escalation of the political battle around the report of special adviser Robert S. Mueller III is centered on the deletions – a review process by a lawyer that has angered Democrats wary of seeing all of the evidence and findings from his 22-month investigation into President Trump's conduct and the 2016 election.
Attorney General William P. Barr writes at least four categories of information from the report, which is nearly 400 pages long, before distributing it to Congress and the public. Legal experts say that he has wide discretion to determine what should not be revealed, which means that fighting for blackened cards may result in fights of several months between the Congress and the Department of Justice, and that it could end up in court.
[Barr says Mueller report will be released by mid-April, if not sooner]
The first public confrontation is imminent. Barr is scheduled to appear on Tuesday and Wednesday before the Senate and House appropriation committees for hearings on the Justice Department's budget. However, it is expected that the Mueller report and its current drafting process will be subject to many questions, and his testimony will be scrutinized for any signs he is trying to protect the president.
"There is a lot of pressure for vigorous publication," said John Bies, who held senior positions in the Justice Department under the Obama administration and now works for American Oversight, a Liberal watchdog group. . "We hope the Attorney General will do what is required and make public everything that can legally be made public."
[Mueller did not find the Trump campaign conspired with Russia]
Barr promised to publish the redacted report in mid-April after announcing in late March that Mueller had not found any conspiracy between the Russians and Trump or his campaign and that Mueller had decided not to comment on the whether Trump obstructed justice. The Attorney General and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, reviewed the evidence relating to the obstruction and determined that it was not a crime, Barr wrote.
The president's critics wondered whether Barr had been consistent with Mueller's findings, which intensified after recent reports that some members of Mueller's team were unhappy with the brevity of Barr's initial report to the US. Congress and believe that it would be possible to say more about the seriousness of what they discovered.
[Limited information Barr has shared about Russia investigation frustrated some on Mueller’s team]
Barr is working with Rosenstein, Mueller and their key collaborators to produce a revised version of the report. In a letter to legislators dated March 29, he outlined four areas that would be redacted: grand jury documents, which could include all documents and evidence presented; information that may reveal the government's sources or methods of collecting information; information that could jeopardize ongoing investigations; and details that would violate the privacy of those who are considered "peripheral" to the investigation.
All of these categories give Barr significant leeway in deciding what to leave and what to take from the public version of the report, as well as the grand jury documents. Under federal criminal procedure rules, government officials are not allowed to share the elements of grand jury proceedings. There are few exceptions.
"Attorneys generally have a broad view of what constitutes grand jury information to avoid inadvertent disclosure, but there is a strong interest in offsetting making everything that comes out of it a reality. public, "said Bies.
Mueller investigators issued more than 2,800 subpoenas and executed nearly 500 search warrants. The material likely to be the subject of a grand jury is therefore voluminous.
In no time, the Federal Court of Appeal in Washington issued a decision Friday in an independent case that supports the argument for protecting the information provided by the grand jury. The jury decided that the judges could not provide for new exceptions to the current grand jury secrecy rules – although he also claimed that the grand jury documents could be shared with the House of Representatives in the context of of an exception dating back to 1974 and a decision of US District Judge John J Sirica during the investigation of President Richard M. Nixon.
Kelly Laco, spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said the agency was "pleased that the court has reaffirmed the long standing position of the Department of Justice and Supreme Court jurisprudence that the smooth operation of the grand jury depends on the confidentiality of the proceedings.The Justice Department will continue to uphold the established tradition of protecting information from the grand jury, "said Laco.
The Speaker of the Judiciary Committee of the House, Representative Jerrold Nadler (DN.Y.) urged the Attorney General to ask a judge to approve disclosure of the grand jury, but Barr did not do so . Nadler is authorized to subpoena Mueller's full report. The committee voted Wednesday online in line with party lines to grant him this opportunity, although to date, no act has yet been published.
"It is disturbing to see that no effort has been announced to ask the grand jury president to clean up the documents," said Walter Dellinger, a law professor at Duke University, a member of the US Department of Justice. Clinton administration.
"The number of legitimate redactions should be quite low," he said. "I do not believe that there is a reason to delete a document for the sole reason that it comes from a grand jury procedure."
While Barr's public letters to lawmakers since Mueller's presentation of his report were intended to dispel any fear that the Attorney General will provide political coverage to the President, each passing day, the pressure intensifies to show Barr that He does not do politics hard. – criminal investigation of Trump and his advisers.
Late last month, the Attorney General informed lawmakers in writing that he would not submit Mueller's report to the White House for it to review any items likely to be covered by the privilege of the executive, which allows the president and other senior officials of the Congress information executive, courts and the public. But Barr's wording in this letter is somewhat ambiguous.
"The president would have the right to claim the privilege over parts of the report," he said, but he has stated publicly that he intended to surrender to me and, therefore, it is not expected to submit the report to the president. House for a privilege review. "
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice declined to say whether this meant that no claim of executive privilege would be invoked for part of Mueller's report or if Barr could, at some point, advise Trump to invoke privilege on certain sections or if Barr could do so unilaterally. .
This last option seems less likely, especially given Barr's previous legal work.
A 1989 legal opinion drafted by the Office of the Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice reiterated the agency's long-standing policy that the Attorney General and other persons could advise the President on when he or she would invoke the privilege, but the only one who could invoke it, was the president. .
This legal opinion, "Congressional Requests for Confidential Information on Executive Power", cited a "Reagan Memorandum" of 1982, which "provides that the privilege of the executive can not be claimed without permission. express the President, based on recommendations made to him by the head of the agency concerned, the Attorney General and the President's attorney. "
The author of this memo, aged 30, was at the head of the CLO at the time: William P. Barr.
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