In his latest letter to Congress, Attorney General Barr said that he would not be sending the Mueller report to Trump to edit, but he will be editing the report for Trump himself.
Read Barr’s letter:
[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.politicususa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/barr-3.pdf”]
The New York Times reported, “However, it remains an open question whether Justice Department lawyers themselves will excise material they believe could be privileged before sending the report to Congress. It is also not clear whether Mr. Barr or other politically appointed officials would be a part of such a redaction process. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on how the department would handle executive privilege issues.
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NBC’s Howard Fineman pointed out what Barr meant on MSNBC:
First of all, Barr is saying that the president is not going to decide on any kind of executive privilege claims. My plan, Barr says, is to do that myself on his behalf. Okay. That’s number one. Number two, my interpretation of having Mueller involved on a little different here. Mueller‘s an institutionalist. He’s going to want to protect other prosecutions that are going on. I’m not sure he’s necessarily going to be for totally putting everything on the table. That remains to be seen. And I’m back timing this from the congressional hearings that are going to take place when Barr and maybe Mueller and other people are going to be up there and members of Congress are going to be questioning them about what happened here and why more of this report wasn’t released. Okay? And why so much was redacted which is what I think is going to happen. They’re going to blame each other. Barr’s going to blame Mueller. Mueller is going to blame Barr. Trump is going to blame Barr and it’s going to be a stall toward the end of what the White House thinks is the game here.”
Video:
Howard Fineman points out that Barr’s new plan is to edit the Mueller report for Trump. https://t.co/12AVJJK4l0 pic.twitter.com/yoiI9MN6VU
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) March 29, 2019
The Mueller report is still being edited before you see it
The Times correctly pointed out that Barr’s letter doesn’t say that the White House won’t be involved. It just says that the White House won’t receive the report before Congress. Barr is playing semantical games. Trump‘s hand-picked attorney general doing the editing for him isn’t different from the White House doing the editing themselves.
None of this changes the reality that someone who was nominated by Trump will be editing the Mueller report.
The Mueller report will be edited before you see it, and behind all of Barr’s gymnastics is the reality that the full report will not be seen.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
