Former President Barack Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates is demanding that Attorney General William Barr serve up the Mueller report to the American public in full “as soon as possible.”
Yates, who served as the deputy attorney general from 2015-2017 under both Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, says that the four-page summary of the report issued by Barr, which shows President Trump exonerated from Russia collusion allegations, is not enough to assure the American people that Trump and his campaign associates conducted themselves within the bounds of the law.
A “week after Mueller issued his report, we don’t know those facts and have only been provided with Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s estimated 400-page report,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published on Friday.
Yates, who served as acting attorney general at the beginning of the Trump administration, was fired by President Trump in February 2017 after she refused to defend an executive order that included a travel ban from several countries where terrorism is endemic.
Following Attorney General William Barr’s submission of a four-page letter to Congress summarizing Mueller’s findings, including finding no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, some congressional Democrats and prominent ex-Obama officials, including Yates, have been calling for a hasty release of the full report, saying Barr’s summary is not enough to satisfy the American people.
Yates said the first step in ensuring the situation is handled properly is by submitting the full report to Congress immediately. She underscored her urgency, saying that every passing day is another opportunity for the Russians to engage in election manipulation, writing “the Russian government is undoubtedly hard at work to undermine our next election.”
She also argues the summary released by Barr leaves more questions than it answers. She points to Barr’s summary saying the Russians did, in fact, offer to help the Trump campaign by delivering opposition research on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. And though the report says the campaign did not accept any help, it contradicts Trump’s repeated denial that he or anyone on his campaign team had any contact with agents of the Russian government. “Only by seeing the full Mueller report can Congress and the American people make an informed assessment,” she writes in reference to the questions left by Barr’s summary.
“The Justice Department should expeditiously provide to Congress a redacted version of the report that identifies the basis for each redaction, and those redactions should be drawn as narrowly as possible,” Yates wrote.
“The redacted report should clearly identify whether the president is seeking to shield information from disclosure based upon an assertion of executive privilege, and redactions to withhold information that is deemed merely “sensitive” should not be accepted without clear justification.”
Yates joins congressional Democrats who have been calling on the Justice Department to release the full Mueller report and its underlying documents. Some Republicans, including House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., have gone further, pushing for the release of the Mueller scope memo and documents related to FISA warrants.
