AG Barr Promises Redacted Mueller Report for Public, with Deadline

Washington DC has been abuzz this week thanks to the finalization of the Mueller report.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller had spent 22 months-plus probing a wide swath of President Trump’s personal life looking for alleged “Russian collusion” during the 2016 presidential race.  Of what’s been made public so far, there seems to be no real evidence of this, a reality specifically noted by Attorney General Bill Barr in his 4 page summary to Congress on the matter.

But, as with any investigation of this scope and scale, the American people, along with a vast majority of Congress and the President, are ready to see the entirety of the Mueller report for themselves – all 300 or so pages of it.

Attorney General Barr has been fully committed to transparency in every public statement made on the case, and now it looks like he’s making good on his word with a new deadline for making the report available to all Americans:  Mid-April.

“Everyone will soon be able to read it,” Mr. Barr wrote in a letter to the chairmen of the congressional judiciary committees.

Prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and other law enforcement officials are scouring the report for sensitive information to black out before releasing it, including secret grand jury testimony, classified materials and information about other continuing federal investigations, Mr. Barr wrote.

And Barr won’t only be releasing the redacted version of the report either, choosing to expound on this transparency via his own testimony to Congress.

He said the report — which covers Moscow’s campaign to sabotage the 2016 presidential race, whether any Trump associates conspired and whether the president obstructed the inquiry — was nearly 400 pages, plus supplements. He said he planned to testify on Capitol Hill in early May, shortly after the report’s release, to discuss it with lawmakers.

The public release of the report will undoubtedly contain a great many redactions, many of which will be legally necessary to protect the innocent.