Barr ‘obfuscation’

A US federal judge in Washington yesterday accused the Justice Department under former Attorneygeneral William Barr of misleading her and Congress about advice he had received from top department officials on whether former President Donald Trump should have been charged with obstructing the Russia investigation and ordered that a related memo be released. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court in Washington said in a ruling on Tuesday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation and that the memo was strategic advice and that Barr had already decided not to prosecute Trump. She also singled out Barr for spinning the investigation’s findings in a letter summarising the 448-page report before it was released, which allowed Trump to claim he had been exonerated.