WASHINGTON — Congress should expect to receive a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation by mid-April, Attorney General William Barr said Friday.
In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees, Barr said he shares a desire for Congress and the public to be able to read Mueller’s findings, which are included in the nearly 400-page report Mueller submitted last week.
Barr said he does not plan to share the report with the White House before making it public. He said that while President Donald Trump would have the right to assert executive privilege over certain parts of the report, “he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”
Mueller officially concluded his investigation when he submitted the report last Friday. Two days later, Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress that detailed Mueller’s “principal conclusions.”
Mueller’s report did not find that the Trump campaign coordinated or conspired with Russia, Barr wrote, and did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice. Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided on their own that Mueller’s evidence was insufficient to establish that the president committed obstruction.
Barr said he is preparing to redact multiple categories of information from the report. Those include grand jury material; information that would compromise sensitive sources and methods; information that could affect ongoing investigations, including those referred by Mueller’s office to other Justice Department offices; and information that could infringe on the personal privacy and reputation of “peripheral third parties.”
“Our progress is such that I anticipate we will be in a position to release the report by mid-April, if not sooner,” he said.
Congress is out for a two-week spring break from April 12-28, making it likely the report could be delivered when lawmakers are out of town.
Barr described Mueller’s report as nearly 400 pages long and said it sets forth Mueller’s analysis, his findings and the reasons for his conclusions.
“Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own,” Barr wrote. “I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report or to release it in serial or piecemeal fashion.”
Democrats intensified their demands for Mueller’s full report after they learned earlier this week that the special counsel’s findings ran more than 300 pages long. They had set a deadline for Tuesday and have said they may issue subpoenas.
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Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.
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Read the letter: http://apne.ws/NiTV5lG
