Secret William Barr memo saying not to charge Trump must be released, judge says

Published May 5, 2021

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Under new management: Judge Amy Jackson issues ruling to release memo why President Trump not charged with crimes as result Mueller investigation.

CNN 5/4/21

Secret William Barr memo saying not to charge Trump must be released, judge says

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A federal judge this week rejected the Justice Department's attempts to keep secret a departmental opinion to not charge former President Donald Trump with obstruction at the end of the Mueller investigation, calling the administration's lawyers "disingenuous."

"The agency's redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time," Jackson wrote in a 35-page opinion released Tuesday.

"The fact that [Trump] would not be prosecuted was a given," she added....

...The judge wrote that while top DOJ officials prepared the legal opinion that gave Barr cover not to prosecute Trump, they simultaneously were emailing about a higher priority they had: to inform Congress the President was exonerated.

Justice Department officials' "affidavits [in court about the memo] are so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence," Jackson wrote....

Full brief: https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/show_public_doc.pdf

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On Friday, March 22, 2019, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III delivered his Report of the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election1 to the then-Attorney General of the United States, William P. Barr.2

But the Attorney General did not share it with anyone else.

Instead, before the weekend was over, he sent a letter to congressional leaders purporting to “summarize the principal conclusions” set out in the Report, compressing the approximately 200 highly detailed and painstakingly footnoted pages of Volume I – which discusses the Russian government’s interference in the election and any links or coordination with the Trump campaign – and the almost 200 equally detailed pages of Volume II – which concerns acts taken by then-President Trump in connection with the investigation – into less than four pages.3 The letter asserted that the Special Counsel “did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,” and it went on to announce the Attorney General’s own opinion that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”4

The President then declared himself to have been fully exonerated.5

The Attorney General’s characterization of what he’d hardly had time to skim, much less, study closely, prompted an immediate reaction, as politicians and pundits took to their microphones and Twitter feeds to decry what they feared was an attempt to hide the ball....