Attorney General William Barr Under Increasing Bipartisan Pressure To Release Mueller Report
Everyone was waiting for this day to arrive.
On Friday evening, as it was revealed that Attorney General William Barr had received the Mueller report, Americans waited with bated breath to see what it would finally uncover about the president and his campaign. After two years of back and forth, and a litany of indictments of former Trump aides, people on either side of the political aisle couldn’t wait to see where the special counsel investigation would lead to. However, Barr informed the Congress that he was reviewing the report and would make recommendations by the end of the week.
Barr, who has reportedly been going through the contents of the report with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, has not revealed the contents of the investigation. He has teased that he would rather give a brief summary of what the report entails, but no one is quite pleased with that.
As NPR reports, the bipartisan pressure on Barr to release the full report is increasing with every passing day. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the decision on whether something can be revealed to the public must not rest with the DOJ.
“[My House colleagues] are insisting that any briefings to any Committees be unclassified so that Members can speak freely about every aspect of the report and not be confined to what DOJ chooses to release publicly.”
She is not wrong. The House voted to make the report public with an overwhelming majority, but that remains a non-binding vote.
#BREAKING: A Justice Department official says the principal conclusions that Attorney General William Barr promised to send Congress after reviewing Robert Mueller's final report are “not coming today," @johnson_carrie reports. https://t.co/RhH8vOD6GF
— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) March 23, 2019
Barr dithering to make the report public was well anticipated by Democrats, and it was one of the principal reasons that Democratic lawmakers were so hesitant to have Barr confirmed as the head of the DOJ in the first place. Some Democrats contend that even though Mueller has not recommended any more indictments, it is only because Trump — a sitting president — cannot be indicted.
Moreover, Barr is not only facing pressure from one direction. Although the news of no further indictments seems to have validated the GOP, even Republican lawmakers want the Mueller report to be public.
“Now that he’s wrapped up his investigation, Attorney General Barr must provide Congress and the American people with the findings to finally put an end to the speculation and innuendo that has loomed over this administration since its earliest days,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, a former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman.
The president and his administration have been unusually quiet about the report, however, and it remains to be seen if the investigation that took nearly two years will bring more problems for Donald Trump.
