House Democrat: Mueller Report Will Reveal ‘Plenty Of Reasons To Be Concerned’ With Trump And Russia

Democratic Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut on Sunday said that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, should it at some point be revealed in its entirety, will demonstrate that there are “plenty of reasons to be concerned” about numerous contacts between Russia and multiple members of the Trump Campaign, as The Hill reports.

Himes, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, pointed out that at this point, both Congress and the American public at large are merely speculating about the possible contents of the report. His statement comes as Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, remains the only person who has reviewed Mueller’s report. So far, no one outside of the Justice Department has any information other than what appears in Barr’s four-page summary of what is reportedly a document that stretches between 300 and 400 pages in length.

“When the report comes out, what the American people will learn was that there was plenty of reason to be concerned about the nature of those contacts and the possibility of what those contacts might have met,” he said. The statements were made during an interview on Fox News Sunday.

Hines went on to speculate that, once the full report is revealed, there will likely be a number of apparent reasons why Trump and his associates were suspected of collusion with Russia in the first place.

We need to see the full report. Full stop.https://t.co/2rMMD3Fn0k

— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) March 31, 2019

Last week, Barr said that he expects the report to be released by mid-April, if not sooner than that. Barr, however, has also indicated that he would first provide the White House an opportunity to redact the report before it is passed along to Congress or made public.

Consistent with Justice Department protocol, the special counsel’s report was delivered exclusively to Barr. However, there have been concerns since the beginning of Barr’s consideration for the attorney general role regarding how he would handle precisely this moment should it ever come to be. Critics have consistently pointed out that his statements in the past have indicated that he might not feel obligated to share the report when it was complete.

Some of those concerns may now appear justified, as Barr has so far refused to release or share with Congress the contents of the report, other than his brief summary. As Barr works in preparing the report for the public, or at least congressional, consumption, lawmakers continue to apply public pressure on the attorney general, advancing resolutions and calling him out with demands to share the report in full.