Barr releases Mueller's report - and feels the heat

[April 19, 2019]  By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr could have buried Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report deep in the recesses of the U.S. Justice Department and simply told the public that President Donald Trump would not face criminal prosecution.

"These reports are not supposed to be made public," he said at a news conference on Thursday morning.

By releasing a redacted version of the report on Thursday, Barr followed through on a promise he had made months earlier to make as much of Mueller's findings public as possible.

But that opened Barr up to widespread criticism from Democrats and some legal experts, who questioned his decision not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, and accused him of acting like the president's personal defense lawyer.

Mueller's 448-page report outlined 10 episodes in which Trump tried to get the special counsel fired, limit the scope of his investigation, or otherwise interfere with the probe.

Mueller stopped short of concluding that Trump had committed a crime, but did not exonerate him of wrongdoing either, leaving Barr or Congress the option to take action against the Republican president.

Some experts said Barr should have brought charges.

"To me, they laid out a chargeable obstruction case," said Shanlon Wu, a former federal prosecutor who represented Rick Gates, the former Trump deputy campaign chairman who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements and is cooperating with the investigation.

Barr's news conference, held before the report's release, provided more fodder for his critics.

Barr praised the White House's cooperation with the investigation and said Trump's public and private efforts to interfere with the probe could have been fueled by a "sincere belief" that the investigation was "propelled by his political opponents and fueled by illegal leaks."

At several points, Barr echoed Trump's mantra that Mueller had found "no collusion" with Russia.

To some, it was a disappointing performance from a man who had been praised for upholding the Justice Department's independence during a previous stint as attorney general from 1991 to 1993.

"He's really shown himself to be principally focused on defending the president," said Robert Litt, a former federal prosecutor who had supported Barr's nomination for the job.

A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Barr did not mislead the public because the White House cooperated with the probe despite Trump's numerous statements criticizing it. The official also said Mueller had a choice to either recommend charges against Trump or not, and he had decided against it.

The top two Democrats in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, accused Barr of deliberately distorting Mueller's findings.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr departs after speaking at a news conference to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, in Washington, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Representative Eric Swalwell, one of the more than 15 Democrats running for president, called on Barr to resign.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, had a different perspective. "I think Barr is a straight lawyer. He's an honest man," he said.

GOING EASY ON THE REDACTIONS

In one area at least, Barr exceeded expectations. Democrats had worried that he might use too heavy a hand when redacting portions of the report that dealt with sensitive material, such as ongoing investigations, confidential legal proceedings and matters of national security.

In the end, 6 percent of the report was blacked out, according to ProPublica.

"The redactions seemed to me to be reasonable," said Jack Sharman, a lawyer who worked on the impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton during the 1990s. "I was a little surprised."

Starting next week, 12 top lawmakers and their staffers will be able to see a more complete version in a secure reading room.

Still, if Democrats were pleasantly surprised by the extent of the redactions, they were not saying so, and Barr is sure to face pointed questions when he testifies before Congress in May.

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, compared Barr to Trump's early mentor Roy Cohn, a political fixer best known for his involvement in Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist scare campaigns of the 1950s.

Trump "may have found his Roy Cohn in Attorney General Barr. But it may be too late, because the truth has come out about how the White House operates in the Mueller report," Raskin said.

To some in Trump's camp, the criticism was a sign of a job well done.

"Attorney General Barr knew every step of the way that people are going to unload on him today," said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser. "He had a role to play and he played it."

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Nathan Layne and David Morgan; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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