Judge demands Barr memo

A federal judge has ordered the release of a legal memorandum the Trumpera Justice Department prepared for thenAttorney General William Barr before he announced his conclusion that former President Donald Trump had not obstructed justice during the Russia investigation. The Justice Department had refused to give the March 24, 2019, memorandum to a government transparency group. But District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, in a sharp rebuke of Barr, said the Justice Department had obscured “the true purpose of the memorandum” when it withheld the document. In her order, Jackson chastised Barr for his general handling of the Mueller report, saying his “characterization of what he’d hardly had time to skim, much less, study closely, prompted an immediate reaction, as politicians and pundits took to their microphones and Twitter feeds to decry what they feared was an attempt to hide the ball.”