Justice must release Trump-russia memo
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release a confidential memo that former Attorney General William Barr cited as justification for not charging expresident Donald Trump with obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
The March 24, 2019, memo was crafted by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to review the Mueller report’s refusal to exonerate Trump of obstruction — and Barr leaned heavily on the document in declining to charge the former president with a crime.
Still, Barr never released the memo publicly, prompting government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to sue the Justice Department on freedom of information grounds.
In a ruling released Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sided with CREW and ordered the department to release the memo because she wrote that it obscured the document’s “true purpose” in withholding it. of jury misconduct, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
Derek Chauvin, who is white, was convicted last month of second-degree unintentional murder, thirddegree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the May 25 death of Floyd. Evidence at trial showed Chauvin pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for
9 ½ minutes as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe and went motionless.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson cited many reasons in his request for a new trial. The brief did not mention recent reports that one of the jurors participated in an Aug. 28 march in Washington, D.C., to honor Martin Luther King Jr.
That juror, Brandon Mitchell, has defended his actions, saying the event was to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington and was not a protest over Floyd’s death. Floyd’s brother and sister, Philonise and Bridgett Floyd, and relatives of others who had been shot by police addressed the crowd at the march last summer.