<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:small">By Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone<br><br>--The American people can handle the truth, whatever it is.
It’s time to release Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report in
full--<br><br>For the sake of American democracy, and the public’s faith in our
justice system, the full, final report produced by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller must be made public. Immediately.
<p class="gmail-indent">Sunday’s slender, four-page memo
to Congress by Attorney General William Barr was wildly inadequate.
Claiming that the special counsel had not found an illegal conspiracy
between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, Barr provided a
cursory summary of Mueller’s findings — managing to not even quote a
complete sentence of the actual report. </p>
<p class="gmail-indent">More egregious: Barr used the same letter to slam shut
a heavy door that Mueller appeared to intentionally leave open. The
special counsel presented evidence for a possible charge of obstruction
of justice by President Trump, writing: “While this report does not
conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not
exonerate him.” </p>
<p class="gmail-indent">Mueller described “difficult issues” of fact and law
that needed to be weighed, based on 22 months of investigation. Barr
made his assessment in less than 48 hours, concluding that no such crime
had been committed, because the president’s (all too public) attempts
at a cover-up did not, in the end, conceal an underlying crime.</p>
<p class="gmail-indent">The Mueller report must be released in full. The
impetus behind the special counsel statute is to enable investigations
to take place outside the normal bounds of partisanship. Even in our
hyper-polarized environment, Mueller’s investigation appeared insulated
from the thrum of politics, gaining the trust of nearly 60 percent
of Americans. It is unacceptable, then, that the only public glimpse of
the special counsel’s work has been filtered through a Trump political
appointee.</p>
<p class="gmail-indent">And Barr is not just any political appointee. In fact,
he may have been picked to lead the Justice Department precisely
because of his views that Trump is immune from obstruction of justice
charges in the context of this particular investigation. In June 2018,
five months before his appointment by president Trump to lead the DOJ,
Barr submitted a memo titled simply “Mueller’s ‘Obstruction’ Theory.” </p>
<p class="gmail-indent">That memo is nearly five times the length of Barr’s
Sunday letter to Congress. Last summer, Barr wrote that Trump’s firing
of FBI Director James Comey, and his suggestion that Comey not prosecute
former national security adviser Michael Flynn, were not acts of
obstruction absent an underlying crime. “[T]he President’s motive in
removing Comey and commenting on Flynn could not have been ‘corrupt’
unless the President and his campaign were actually guilty of illegal
collusion,” Barr wrote, “[b]ecause the obstruction claim is entirely
dependent on first finding collusion.” In sum, Barr concluded:
“Mueller’s obstruction theory is fatally misconceived.”</p>
<p class="gmail-indent">In his new letter to Congress, Barr leaned on the same
logic in justifying his decision not to indict Trump for obstruction:
“In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel
recognized that ‘the evidence does not establish that the President was
involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election
interference.’” Barr added another sentence or two of legalese, but the
Attorney General is saying, in essence, that a coverup in the absence of
an underlying crime is not obstruction.</p>
<p class="gmail-indent">Barr’s behavior in this case raises a troubling
possibility: That his appointment to head the Department of Justice, and
his work in that post under color of law, is itself an act of
obstruction by the president of the United States — that Trump is using
his powers as the nation’s chief executive to tip the scales of justice
in his own favor. </p>
<p class="gmail-indent">Until the Mueller report is released in full,
Americans will rightly doubt the integrity of our justice system. That
creeping doubt is a cancer, capable of hollowing trust in yet another
core institution of our republic. Sunshine in this case is the only
cure. But Barr, in his letter to Congress, indicated that he intends to
shield some of Mueller’s work product from public view, citing secrecy
that “protects the integrity of grand jury proceedings.” </p>
<p class="gmail-indent">The full publication of Mueller’s report and evidence
will not satisfy everyone. Some Russiagate theorists will never be
convinced that President Trump’s rise to the White House was possible in
absence of a partnership with Vladimir Putin. The confounding decision
by Mueller not to make a prosecutorial recommendation on the
obstruction of justice charge may remain confounding, even in the light
of all evidence. But the citizens of our democracy deserve the chance to
struggle over these facts, honestly and evenly.</p>
<p class="gmail-indent">Congress has made clear its intention: By a vote of 420 to 0
the House of Representatives has called for the release of the Mueller
report. A recent poll found 81 percent of the American public also want
the report published in its entirety. Neal Katyal, who helped draft the
regulations that govern the special counsel, wrote
recently: “Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents
the report from becoming public.” The health of our democracy depends on
it.
</p><p class="gmail-indent"><a href="https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/55695-focus-release-the-report">https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/55695-focus-release-the-report</a><br></p><p class="gmail-indent"># # #<br></p></div></div></div></div></div></div>