A federal district judge in
Washington on Thursday ordered the Department of Justice to give him an un-redacted copy of the Mueller Report over “grave concerns about the objectivity” of attorney general William Barr’s handling of the report’s release.“The actions of Attorney General Barr and his representations about the Mueller Report preclude the Court’s acceptance of the validity of the Department’s redactions without its independent verification,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton wrote in a 23-page opinion. He also slammed Barr, implying that Barr’s statements in the buildup to the report’s release misled the public.“The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report,” he wrote. “These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr’s lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility.”Barr sent a four-page summary of the nearly 400-page report to the House and
Senate Judiciary Committees in March, in which he stated that Mueller had found no collusion between the
Trump campaign and
Russia — but had left open the question of whether the president obstructed justice during the probe.Mueller then complained in a letter to Barr that his summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report and caused “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”The
Justice Department downplayed the letter, pointing out that Mueller did not say Barr had been “inaccurate or misleading,” but that he was frustrated “over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage,” but
Democrats called on Barr to resign for misleading the public.While Walton did not dispute the lack of evidence regarding
Russian collusion, he still questioned whether the DOJ had redacted portions of the report with the proper motivation.“In the Court’s view, Attorney General Barr’s representation that the Mueller Report would be ‘subject only to those redactions required by law or by compelling law enforcement, national security, or personal privacy interests’ cannot be credited without the Court’s independent verification in light of Attorney General Barr’s conduct and misleading public statements about the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton stated.