Dems press Barr to make Mueller report public

Top House Democrats are pressing Attorney General William Barr to release a public version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report.

Six Democrat committee chairmen in a letter to Barr on Friday said they expect the probe’s findings to be released publicly “without delay and to the maximum extent permitted by law.”

It said there is a “significant public interest in the full disclosure of information learned by the Special Counsel about the nature and scope of the Russian government’s efforts to undermine our democracy.”

{mosads}”To the extent that the Department believes that certain aspects of the report are not suitable for immediate public release, we ask that you provide that information to Congress, along with your reasoning for withholding the information from the public, in order for us to judge the appropriateness of any redactions for ourselves,” they continued.

The letter follows reports that Mueller could be sending his probe to the Department of Justice as soon as next week. On Friday, the Justice Department told The Hill the report will not be delivered next week, when President Trump is scheduled to hold a summit in Vietnam with North Korea’s leader. 

The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (Md.), Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (Calif.), Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (Calif.), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (Mass.) and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (N.Y.).

“After nearly two years of investigation — accompanied by two years of direct attacks on the integrity of the investigation by the President — the public is entitled to know what the Special Counsel has found,” they wrote.

The letter also took issue with legal guidance at the Department of Justice that says a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“To maintain that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and then to withhold evidence of wrongdoing from Congress because the President will not be charged, is to convert Department policy into the means for a cover-up. The President is not above the law,” they letter states.

The Democrats say they expect to be able to review, upon their request, “other information and material obtained or produced by the Special Counsel regarding certain foreign actors and other individuals who may have been the subject of a criminal or counterintelligence investigation.”