Special Advisor Mueller will leave the GM in "the next few days" – Quartz



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Robert Mueller, the special advocate who spent nearly two years investigating Donald Trump's ties with Russia's interference in the 2016 US election, will leave the Department of Justice in "The next few days," said a spokesman.

Mueller, who has devoted 674 days to the investigation before handing out a 400-page report to Advocate General William Barr, "will terminate his services in the coming days," said today. Quartz spokesperson, Peter Carr. "A small staff remains to help close the office operations," said Carr. He said he had no more information on exactly when Mueller would leave, nor on the possibility that his departure coincided with Barr's promise to distribute a redacted version of the report by mid-April.

Mueller, a long-time public servant, led the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013; He left a private law firm to conduct the special investigation in May 2017, following the brutal dismissal of Trump by FBI President James Comey. Carr, who was the spokesperson for the special council's office since the beginning of the investigation, has returned to the department's main public affairs office.

Even though Mueller's departure is imminent, huge questions remain as to what the investigation actually revealed. The four-page summary of the report released by Barr, published on March 24, was criticized by Mueller's associates for not accurately describing the contents of the report and omitting the "alarming" details he uncovered, reports the Washington Post. The White House says the report "completely exonerates" Trump, although Barr's summary specifically quotes Mueller for writing: "This report does not conclude that the president has committed a crime, nor does he exonerate him. . "

On April 3, the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives voted to authorize subpoenas for the unredacted full report and the underlying evidence. Barr, and eventually Mueller, could be called to testify before the committee. During special investigations into US presidential misconduct, Congress finally had access to prosecutors' special reports and the underlying information.

Senate Republicans blocked a move to make the Mueller report public five times.

Will Mueller be able to speak after his release?

As more and more questions arise about the nature of the long-running investigation into the extent of Russia's interference in the 2016 elections and how to prevent it in 2020, many people are wondering: why Mueller just go out publicly and clarify things?

After all, former FBI officials, including Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who were fired a few days before the start of his pension retirement, after a decades-long career in government, have embarked on flash campaigns after their departure. They wrote books about their experience and talked about them on cable TV and morning talk shows.

Even after Mueller leaves the Justice Department, he is unlikely to engage in a series of media interviews about the investigation or even the unique role he has played in American democracy. . First of all, it's not his style, said former colleagues at Quartz.

And even if it is unlikely that a contract signed by Mueller with the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation will be accompanied by a specific non-disclosure agreement preventing it from publicly debating. of the investigation, it is still morally forbidden for him to disclose inside information, such as information about the internal functioning of the executive that is normally protected from disclosure by the common law principle called "privilege" deliberative process "or anything that comes from a grand jury testimony. Carr did not respond to questions regarding Mueller's plans after he left, nor could he speak freely about the unclassified items in the investigation.

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