Judge: Barr’s decision not to charge Trump ‘untruthful’
A federal judge in Washington accused the Justice Department under Attorney General 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.
The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Trump.
But Jackson ruled that it contained strategic advice, and that Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be.
“The fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” Jackson wrote of Trump.
She singled out Barr for how he had spun 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.
She also wrote that although the department portrayed the advice memo as a legal document protected by attorney-client privilege, it was done in concert with Barr’s publicly released summary, “written by the very same people at the very same time”.
A spokesperson for Barr did not return an email seeking comment, nor did the Justice Department.
Jackson said the government had until May 17 to decide whether it planned to appeal her ruling, a decision that will be made by a Justice Department run by Biden appointees.
The ruling came in a lawsuit by a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asking that the Justice Department be ordered to turn over a range of documents related to how top law enforcement officials cleared Trump of wrongdoing.
At issue is how Barr handled the end of the Mueller investigation and the release of its findings to the public. In March 2019, the office of the special counsel overseeing the inquiry, Robert Mueller, delivered its report to the Justice Department.
In a highly unusual decision, Mueller declined to make a determination about whether Trump illegally obstructed justice.
That opened the door for Barr to take control of the investigation.
Two days after receiving the report, Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress saying that Trump would not be charged with obstructing justice and summarising the report.
Mueller’s team believed that Barr’s characterisation of the document was misleading and privately urged him to release more of their findings, but Barr refused.