Mueller Report May Never Be Released To Public, Barr Preparing His Own ‘Summary,’ ‘New York Times’ Reports
As congressional Democrats gear up to fight the Donald Trump administration over release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the findings of his 22-month investigation into Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign — and possible obstruction of justice by Trump himself — a new report appearing Tuesday in The New York Times says that the Trump administration’s Department of Justice may never release the actual report to Congress, and the public, at all.
Instead, Times reporter Peter Baker wrote, the Justice Department led by Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr will prepare a “summary” of the Mueller report, which it will transmit to Congress “within weeks, though not months.”
Barr submitted a four-page letter on Sunday, outlining what he said were Mueller’s main conclusions including what Barr said was Mueller’s finding that neither Trump nor anyone in the Trump campaign directly participated in either the Russian social media propaganda campaign during the 2016 presidential election, or the Russian email hacking and dumping operation. Though Mueller could not decide whether Trump obstructed justice in the case, presenting evidence on both sides, Barr said, the attorney general unilaterally decided that Trump should not be prosecuted for obstruction, as The Inquisitr reported.
Democrats in Congress have demanded that Barr send them the entire, unredacted, and unedited Mueller Report. In fact, in a letter to Barr sent on Tuesday, six House Democratic committee chairs told the attorney general that his brief memo was “not sufficient,” according to NBC News.
“We look forward to receiving the report in full no later than April 2, and to begin receiving the underlying evidence and documents that same day,” the Democrats wrote in the letter to Barr. There was no report as to whether Barr responded to the Democrats’ demand.
According To Barr’s letter, as posted online by the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller limited his Russia collusion investigation to the question of whether Trump or anyone around him took part in the two Russian conspiracies to influence the 2016 election.
As a result of that extremely narrow scope, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff dismissed the “no collusion” finding, saying in an interview quoted by The Washington Post, “undoubtedly there is collusion.”
Schiff said that his committee would “continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues. That is, is the president or people around him compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power?” Those counterintelligence questions do not appear to have been addressed in Mueller’s report, Schiff said.
