The hotly anticipated report from special counsel Robert Mueller is due for release Thursday morning, but not before Attorney General William Barr holds a press conference that Democrats have denounced as yet another ploy to protect President Trump.
Nearly one month ago Mueller’s expansive investigation came to a close, ending a yearslong inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and an examination of whether the president obstructed justice. Within two days Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress he said was meant to “summarize the principal conclusions,” and although Trump and his allies saw exoneration in its contents, Democrats raised the alarm about what they feared was a cover-up due to the summary only sparsely quoting Mueller’s actual report.
That fight is poised to heat up when Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein address reporters at 9:30 a.m. Already chairmen in the Democrat-led House are demanding the press conference about the report be canceled as it “appears designed to shape public perceptions of the report before anyone can read it.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed on Twitter the Justice Department informed Congress that they will not receive the report until sometime between 11 a.m. and noon, after Barr’s press conference. Also unclear is when reporters will get access to the report and whether they will have adequate time to prepare questions for Barr and Rosenstein. Several reporters voiced their dismay on social media Wednesday evening.
Further solidifying the optics of a partisan scheme in the eyes of Barr’s critics was a New York Times report that said the Justice Department had “numerous conversations” with lawyers from the White House about the report, which helped Trump’s legal team prepare a rebuttal they plan to release after Mueller’s findings are unveiled. And then there’s Mueller’s role in tomorrow’s events. Although the special counsel helped Barr prepare the redactions, neither Mueller nor his team of prosecutors will be present for the press conference, his longtime spokesman Peter Carr confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
“The central concern here is that Attorney General Barr is not allowing the facts of the Mueller report to speak for themselves but is trying to bake in the narrative about the report to the benefit of the White House,” Nadler said in a hastily organized press conference in New York City Wednesday evening.
Writing to Congress in late March, Barr stated Mueller did not establish any collusion between Russia and anyone on the Trump campaign in 2016 and that Mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice one way or the other. Barr, along with Rosenstein, then made the legal determination that obstruction by Trump did not occur.
Trump proclaimed it “a complete and total exoneration.”
Barr’s framing of the Mueller report, his decision to clear Trump on obstruction, and his choice of redactions will be the focus of debate stemming far beyond Thursday’s release. Barr’s reputation could be sullied if Mueller’s report contains new bombshells not mentioned in his summary.
In recent days, a number of media outlets have called into question the Barr summary’s reliability, pointing back to what they claim is Barr’s sketchy track record of providing legal summaries over the years. Specifically, they unearthed a controversy from 1989 involving Barr’s time as the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. In a 13-page letter, Barr similarly “summarize[d] the principal conclusions” of a then-secret controversial legal opinion that, when the full opinion was released in 1991, seemed to have glossed over some key underlying facts.
[Related: Democrats question Barr’s ‘independence,’ demand full Mueller report]
Barr’s Russia investigation summary directly quoted Mueller only a few times. On the issue of collusion, Barr quoted Mueller as unequivocally saying “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”
On obstruction, Barr said Mueller was far less definitive. Barr quoted the special counsel as saying there were “difficult issues” during his “thorough factual investigation” into obstruction, emphasizing that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” One question that should be answered Thursday is whether these quotes accurately represented the thrust of Mueller’s full report.
Barr is a veteran of the Justice Department, serving as attorney general for a second time following a stint from 1991 to 1993 during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. During his 2019 confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he repeatedly promised transparency with the Mueller report, but added that it would be done “consistent with regulations and the law.”
In recent weeks Barr has revealed the report from Mueller will contain redactions across four major categories, including material related to grand jury proceedings, information that could compromise sensitive sources and methods, details that could affect other ongoing investigations, including those referred by the special counsel’s office to other offices, and material that would, according to Barr, harm the reputation of third parties. Barr said he will “color code” the report with “explanatory notes describing the basis for each redaction.”
Leading Democrats have vowed to subpoena the full Mueller Report without redactions and plan to call Barr and perhaps even Mueller to testify in front of Congress. They have told Barr how important it is that “Congress receives the full report and all of the underlying evidence.”
Nadler’s office told the Washington Examiner Wednesday morning that “subpoenas could come very quickly if we do not receive the full, unredacted report with the underlying evidence from DOJ.”
In addition to the congressional fight, a battle for the full Mueller report is gearing up in federal court. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and BuzzFeed have both sued for the report under the Freedom of Information Act, with the next hearing coming on May 2. The judge in the case criticized Barr for “creating an environment that has caused a significant part of the American public to be concerned about whether there will be full transparency“ earlier this week.
Republicans have attacked the way the DOJ and FBI conducted themselves during the Trump-Russia investigation, and Barr seems to share some of these concerns. Critics of the Justice Department have pointed to, among other the things, the use of the largely unverified Trump dossier by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to spy on onetime Trump campaign official Carter Page. That dossier, compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele during his time working for opposition research firm Fusion GPS, was funded in part by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. The dossier was given to more than a dozen members of the media and found its way into the Justice Department and FBI through various individuals.
Democrats have countered that the FBI acted appropriately in obtaining the authority to surveil Trump campaign associates over concerns about Russian influence. In its rebuttal to the House Intelligence GOP memo, Democrats said the Justice Department and FBI “met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.”
Republicans have also criticized the appointment of a special counsel in the first place, which took place days after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 and was a likely focus of Mueller’s obstruction investigation. Comey’s leaking of memos on his conversations with Trump was a likely impetus in the appointment of Mueller.
During congressional testimony last week, Barr said he is putting together a team to examine the Justice Department’s original probe in 2016 about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, including whether the Obama administration’s Justice Department improperly launched this investigation.
“I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance,” Barr told lawmakers. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting it was not adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”
Barr’s use of the term “spying” drew outrage from many Democrats, and he declined to withdraw the remark. Trump later tweeted out a call to “investigate the Investigators!”
The Mueller saga is playing out at the same time as an independent investigation into possible FISA abuse and other Justice Department actions by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is quietly being conducted. When it was launched in March 2018, Horowitz’s office said it would “examine the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
Barr said that investigation will conclude by May or June.
U.S. attorney John Huber was also tasked by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March 2018 with looking into the actions by the Justice Department and FBI. The progress that Huber’s office has made is not known.
Meanwhile, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, put together a series of criminal referrals targeting individuals tied to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, which Barr said he is willing to examine. Nunes’ outreach to Barr to meet privately had Democrats crying foul.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., has said it is “highly likely” that the Justice Department’s FISA probe produces further referrals.
In an effort to shine a light on the DOJ’s actions, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., has in recent weeks released transcripts of the private interviews of former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, his wife and former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former top FBI official Bill Priestap, and former FBI general counsel James Baker.
Mueller’s investigation resulted in 35 people and three companies being criminally charged, including Papadopoulos, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. The Internet Research Agency, a Russia-based troll farm that pushed election misinformation on social media, was also charged, and indictments were handed down against members of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, which is alleged to have hacked Democratic officials’ emails in 2016 and provided them to WikiLeaks for dissemination. No Americans were charged with collusion.
Barr, in emphasizing the sheer scale of the special counsel investigation, said Mueller “employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff” and emphasized that he “issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.”
On Thursday, Congress and the public will finally get a better look at the result of the special counsel’s work — but this time in Mueller’s, not Barr’s, own words.
