Barr: Mueller report to be released within week
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr vowed Tuesday to release a redacted version of the Mueller report “within a week,” defending his handling of the special counsel investigation’s findings as a bid for transparency as Democrats accused him of politically motivated behavior.
Barr said he would explain his redactions and was open to negotiating with lawmakers about revealing some of the delicate information that he and law enforcement officials are blacking out from the highly anticipated report before he sends it to Congress and the public.
“This process is going along very well, and my original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands,” Barr said at a House budget hearing. “And so I think that from my standpoint, within a week I will be in a position to release the report to the public.”
But he was less forthcoming about aspects of his review, declining to say whether President Donald Trump had been briefed on the report after Justice Department and White House officials had said for weeks that the president has not been updated on its contents. And he
did not explain why he cleared Trump of committing an obstruction of justice offense when the special counsel’s team declined to make a decision.
Democrats assailed Barr’s decision to send a four-page letter to Congress in March outlining the main findings of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, pointing to complaints by members of the special counsel’s team that Barr failed to fully portray the extent of how damaging their conclusions might be for Trump.
“The American people have been left with many unanswered questions, serious concerns about the process by which you formulated your letter and uncertainty about when we can expect to see the full report,” said Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., the head of the appropriations subcommittee that covers the Justice Department.
Barr insisted that he had accurately delivered the “bottom line” conclusions from Mueller’s inquiry into Russia’s election interference and whether any Trump associates conspired, as well as whether Trump tried to impede the inquiry. He said that Mueller declined an opportunity to read his March 24 letter before Barr sent it to lawmakers. And Barr warned that trying to quickly summarize the report more fully would have exposed him to a minefield of potential criticism.
“I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize,” Barr said, “because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of being under-inclusive or over-inclusive, but also would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out at once.”
Barr pushed back on Democrats’ complaints that they did not have the report, reminding them that they would be able to read it in days. And as for his four-page letter, he suggested that had he not written it, lawmakers would have bitterly complained if they were given no information or insight into Mueller’s conclusions during the redaction process.
“In my judgment, it was important for people to know the bottom-line conclusions of the report while we worked on necessary redactions to make the whole thing available,” said Barr, adding that he anticipated that the redactions would take weeks.
The back and forth came during an unusually contentious House appropriations subcommittee hearing, where Barr also defended the Trump administration’s hardening stance on immigration and the Justice Department’s decision to stand down rather than appeal a federal judge’s decision to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
Barr also revealed that the Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is wrapping up an examination of parts of the Russia investigation, including accusations that law enforcement officials abused their powers to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
Horowitz could reveal the results as early as May or June, Barr said.
Though Democrats have for weeks demanded to see the full text of the Mueller report and all underlying investigative materials, Barr reminded them that he is operating under rules written by Clinton administration officials to prevent a repetition of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
In 1998, Ken Starr gave lawmakers a long report that contained detailed narrative description of the evidence, including lurid sexual details and extensive legal analysis of potential crimes by the president.
Under the current regulations, the special counsel delivers a confidential report of investigative decisions to the attorney general, who is free to decide what to release.
“I am relying on my own discretion to make as much public as I can,” Barr said.
To that end, Barr repeated his promise that lawmakers would receive a redacted report in mid-April and that he would testify about its contents soon afterward.
He said that he would identify which of four categories redacted material fell into — secret grand jury testimony, classified information, materials that could affect current investigations and information about peripheral third parties. Those were the same types of information that Democrats have fought to protect when Republicans tried to obtain documents from the Justice Department.
Justice Department officials have said that they have not shared the report or briefed the White House on its contents, so the demurral raised the possibility that the situation had shifted. Barr is likely to be pressed on the matter Wednesday, when he is scheduled to testify before Senate appropriators.
Barr visited Capitol Hill to answer questions about the Justice Department’s proposed $29.2 billion budget for the next fiscal year, which includes money for 100 new judges for immigration courts, which are part of the department, not the judicial system.