A federal judge who questioned Attorney General William Barr’s “credibility” granted the Justice Department’s request for a delay to answer questions about former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
With the extension, District Court Judge Reggie Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush, gave the Trump administration until next Tuesday to respond, a week later than what was previously scheduled.
The case is one that was brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and BuzzFeed, which sued for the report in its entirety under the Freedom of Information Act.
After Walton gave the Justice Department a spreadsheet with questions about the redactions, the agency said it required additional time as it conducts “consultations with numerous Department components, including the Office of Information Privacy, the National Security Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices.”
The judge moved the ex parte hearing scheduled for next Monday back to Aug. 17, and the Justice Department said in its motion that its “goal with this process is to ensure fulsome responses to the Court’s questions that would obviate the need for a hearing.”
The Justice Department’s answers had been due this Tuesday, but in its request for a weeklong extension, the agency said: “This additional time is necessary because the majority of Court’s inquiries concerning the redactions require the Department to consult with various entities with equities in the information at issue, both within and outside the Department. The Department has received information from some, but not all, of the entities.”
Walton, who has seen the full, unredacted report, previously said the court had “grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report” and its “impacts on the Justice Department’s subsequent justifications” and that its redactions of the report were authorized under FOIA.
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec pushed back against Walton’s claims earlier this year, calling the court’s assertions “contrary to the facts.”
“The original redactions in the public report were made by Department attorneys, in consultation with senior members of Special Counsel Mueller’s team, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and members of the Intelligence Community,” Kupec said. “In response to FOIA requests, the entire report was then reviewed by career attorneys, including different career attorneys with expertise in FOIA cases — a process in which the Attorney General played no role. There is no basis to question the work or good faith of any of these career Department lawyers.”
Kupec said the Justice Department “stands by” the work of the DOJ officials who made the redaction decisions and defended Barr’s “efforts to provide as much transparency as possible in connection with the Special Counsel’s confidential report.”
Mueller’s report, released in April 2019, noted his investigation “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” and that Russia interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion.” But the special counsel “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
On the issue of possible obstruction of justice, Mueller said he “determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the president committed crimes” but that, “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that Trump had not obstructed justice.
The Supreme Court also recently agreed to take up the battle between the House Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department, in which congressional Democrats are seeking access to the redacted and underlying grand jury materials from Mueller’s report. Those arguments will be heard in the fall, and it’s possible the decision might not be released until after the 2020 election.
