AG nominee William Barr: Mueller Report confidential by law and will NOT be released

OK, I have been thinking about this.

Mueller will be called to testify before Congress. They will ask him a series of questions around this issue. The AG's report will be public. If there is anything material omitted, Mueller will be expected to say so, under oath, live on CSPAN.

Unless you believe that the Democrats (not to mention the Republicans) will refrain from asking him about this.

 

I can try to explain it to you. After the Star independent counsel investigation and subsequent impeachment of President Clinton, the Independent Counsel statute was allowed to lapse (it was not renewed by Congress, as was required if it was to be continued). It was replaced by Special Counsel procedures under the DOJ's Office of Special Counsel by then Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno, which is what Bob Mueller's Special Counsel is operating under now, and what AG nominee Barr is referring to when he states that the Special Counsel Report is classified and cannot be released as a result.

The development of these new procedures was a bipartisan team effort and a lot of expert input was solicited. AG Reno did not just write these procedures by herself, but she did approve them from the perspective of a Democrat President's AG who was concerned that these procedures needed to be sufficient to hold Republican (and Democrat) presidents accountable, but would not be overly harsh in the treatment of Democrat (and Republican) presidents. She and the authors of the Special Counsel procedures knew that this needed to be a set of procedures that worked for investigating both Democrat and Republican presidents alike. And the almost universal consensus among those familiar with these procedures from that time to this - both Republicans and Democrats - is that these new procedures do in fact strike the correct balance.

This may feel weird to you just now, as the very idea that the same standards that would be applied to Democrat presidents should also applied to Republican presidents, including in the current case Donald Trump, appears to be virtually inconceivable and almost unimaginable - even after becoming familiar with these Clinton administration developed procedures from almost exactly 20 years ago - to most of the Democrat left and the left leaning mass media, who are clearly devoted to the core of their beings to destroying Donald Trump, literally by any means necessary. And of course the meltdowns have already begun by many in the mass media and Democrats in Congress, who find this idea of evenhanded restraint completely outrageous and truly unfathomable. I hope this description does not also describe you.

Nevertheless, there is a reasonable explanation why these procedures were designed the way they were. As I believe you are aware, our judicial system is an "adversarial" judicial system. This means that prosecutors, who are basically attack dogs whose job is to get people convicted of crimes, compete with defense attorneys, who advocate for the accused, are also basically attack dogs, albeit much better paid. The contest is a bit like a tug of war and the judges job is to regulate this contest, with a view towards rendering a verdict on evidence properly introduced and presented by the two sides - without any unnecessary or improper hyperbole. As a result, it should not be assumed that if a prosecutor levies an accusation that it is correct. In fact, prosecutors are often times very aggressive, even overly aggressive, in their presentations and it is not unusual for the judge to have to take steps to restrict the over-aggressiveness of prosecuting attorneys.

In the course of a court case, juries watch this process and quickly become aware of the antics by the two sides as they advocate for their perspectives, which will frequently cause a measure of skepticism, which is often times also encouraged to some degree by the judge. In a Special Counsel investigation report, there is only one side, which is not presented to a jury, but rather to the public and the media.

Rather than having the court room environment as the setting for the presentation of the results of the Special Counsel investigation, which will usually serve to dampen the effect of the drama produced by the attorneys, the media and the politicians of the opposition serve to produce precisely the opposite effect. They magnify the drama. And if it is a Republican president that is being investigated, as we have now, they do that to the maximum degree humanly imaginable and then even more so beyond that. As we have been witnessing live on worldwide television and across the internet for over two years now.

So in the aftermath of the Star Report and the Clinton impeachment, with all the attending drama that surrounded that exercise, it was decided that it would be wise to have a bit of a filter on the report by the prosecutor (the Special Counsel). This was not to remove any substantial allegations, but to remove the overly aggressive tone often used by prosecutors, which is what Bob Mueller and his team are. It is to remove the prosecutorial attack dog 'snarl' from any accusations included in the report and to present the report in a more flat, factual, even-toned report. So the Special Counsel report is considered to be confidential, along the lines of a report to a grand jury. And the Attorney General prepares a report on the Special Counsel's report and investigation.

But Trump. If the recently developed opponents of these, up until now, almost universally supported - on a bipartisan basis -Special Counsel procedures cannot come up with a much more substantial justification for altering these procedures than this, then their perspective will very fairly be regarded as pure partisan hackery of the very worst kind. And these partisan calls will be dismissed with the derision that they so rightly deserve.

It appears to me that the Special Counsel procedures, including the classification of the Special Counsel report as confidential, strikes the right balance. Again, Bob Mueller will read the report prepared by the Attorney General and Mueller may even be asked for his feedback and input about the report by the Attorney General. Then Bob Mueller will testify before Congress, where Democrats now control the committees, and they will be able to ask any questions they like. Checks and balances are in place. So if the Attorney General tries to interfere with the release of any substantial allegations included in the Special Counsel Report, he will not get away with it. Nor should he.

 

It will have to be the Mueller crew that does it, if it is leaked. Because it is not being provided to Congress for them to be able to leak it.

 

Well, it is the system that Bill Clinton's AG Janet Reno came up with. So if it is good for the Democrats, should it now not be good enough for the Republicans?

The AG is not going to want to hide evidence. But he is also not going to want to include a lot of speculation or hyperbole that prosecutors have a tendency to include in their reports, as they endeavor to push the limits on what they can get by with. Nor should that kind of stuff be included in a politically charged report like what his report on the Special Counsel's investigation necessarily will be.

So, just releasing the Special Counsel's report is not a better way to go. And that is not my idea, or William Barr's idea. It was effectively Janet Reno's idea. Mueller will testify about the veracity and fairness of the AG's report. This is what Janet Reno and the people who crafted the Special Counsel procedures determined was the best way they could come up with to achieve the proper balance.

For those who are interested in a fair and balanced process, I think this is going to work out just fine. For those who are out to whip up as much drama and outrage as they can, with no regard for whether that is fair or true or just, and who are devoted to getting Trump by literally any means necessary, the inability to see and publish the Special Counsel's report will seem like a big disappointment, to put it mildly. Those people need to detox themselves of the unhinged hatefulness and try to start approaching all of this in a more mature, reasonable, responsible and even-handed way. I do not know what to tell them, other than that.

 

AG nominee William Barr has stated that Congress will be permitted to release his final report on the Mueller investigation to the public:

William Barr says Congress can release his final report on Mueller

Barr told senators in written responses to questions that a current regulation allows Congress to release his report on Mueller's final product. He was responding to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who, like other Democrats, is worried Barr would not allow his summary to be released.

“Although there could conceivably be information in the Attorney General’s report, such as classified information, that may not be publicly disclosed, [ the regulation] does not itself restrict what Congress may do with the report,” Barr wrote.

{More at the link}​

 

You do not know that. Come on now. You are jumping to conclusions. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras county would be proud.