Judge cites Barr’s ‘misleading’ statements in ordering review of Mueller report redactions

[homersapien 11,453]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/mueller-report-attorney-general-william-barr/2020/03/05/3fa7afce-5f2c-11ea-b29b-9db42f7803a7_story.html

Judge cites Barr’s ‘misleading’ statements in ordering review of Mueller report redactions

By

Spencer S. Hsu and 

Devlin Barrett 

March 5, 2020 at 6:49 p.m. EST

A federal judge in D.C. sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr on Thursday for a “lack of candor,” questioning the truthfulness of the nation’s top law enforcement official in his handling of last year’s report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, overseeing a lawsuit brought by EPIC, a watchdog group, and BuzzFeed News, said he saw serious discrepancies between Barr’s public statements about Mueller’s findings and the public, partially redacted version of that report detailing the special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Read Judge Reggie B. Walton’s opinion on the Justice Department’s handling of the Mueller report

Because of those discrepancies, Walton ruled, the judge would conduct an independent review of Mueller’s full report to see if the Justice Department’s redactions were appropriate.

“In the Court’s view, Attorney General Barr’s representation that the Mueller Report would be ‘subject only to those redactions required by law or by compelling law enforcement, national security, or personal privacy interests’ cannot be credited without the Court’s independent verification in light of Attorney General Barr’s conduct and misleading public statements about the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote.

A spokeswoman for Barr declined to comment on the judge’s ruling.

It is highly unusual for a federal judge to publicly question the honesty of the attorney general, but Walton’s opinion comes amid growing rancor between the judicial branch of the government and the executive and legislative branches. Earlier Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he regretted comments he’d made about two conservative Supreme Court Justices — comments that drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. after many Republicans called them threatening. President Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly attacked federal judges, drawing condemnation from Democrats.

Read the Mueller Report

Mueller’s lengthy two-part report detailed the findings of his investigation into whether anyone on the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, and whether Trump tried to obstruct that investigation.

In March 2019, Barr issued a four-page letter describing what he called the principal conclusions of Mueller’s investigation, including that Mueller had decided not to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” about whether the president tried to obstruct justice. Barr said he therefore examined the evidence and determined Trump had not broken the law.

That letter frustrated Mueller, who complained to Barr that the attorney general’s description “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his team’s work and conclusions.

Mueller complained Barr’s letter did not fully capture his findings

At the time, Democrats accused Barr of soft-pedaling Mueller’s findings to discourage Congress from taking up a possible impeachment case against Trump for obstruction.

in his 23-page opinion, Walton said he had “grave concerns about the objectivity of the process” that led up to the public release of Mueller’s report.

“The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote. “These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr’s lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility.”

The judge said he would not take Justice Department lawyers at their word that redactions in the report were all done for appropriate reasons.

EPIC announced the judge’s decision in a news release and on social media, joined by Buzfeed reporter Jason Leopold, who tweeted, “This is what we hoped for!”

Walton’s decision is the latest indication of growing concern among federal judges in Washington about politicization at the Justice Department.

Last month, another federal judge in the same courthouse, Amy Berman Jackson, sentenced Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone to more than three years in prison, following an internal fight between Barr, his deputies, and career prosecutors over what sentence to recommend in that case.

Thursday’s opinion was not the first time Walton, appointed a U.S. district judge in 2001 by President George W. Bush, has criticized Barr and the Justice Department’s leadership under his tenure.

At a court hearing in the same case in April, Walton said Barr “has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency.”

Separately, in October, Walton called on U.S. prosecutors either to charge former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe or to drop their long-running investigation into whether he lied to investigators about a media disclosure, saying their indecision was undermining the credibility of the Justice Department by creating the appearance it was hounding one of Trump’s enemies.

At a Feb. 14 hearing, Walton noted Trump’s repeated personal attacks on McCabe raised concerns about the motives behind the investigation of the former FBI official.

“I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road and we have those type of statements being made that are conceivably, even if not, influencing the ultimate decision. I think there are a lot of people on the outside who perceive that there is undue inappropriate pressure being brought to bear,” Walton, said.

He added later: “I think as a government and as a society we’re going to pay a price at some point for this.”

 

[aubiefifty 16,913]

14 hours ago, homersapien said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/mueller-report-attorney-general-william-barr/2020/03/05/3fa7afce-5f2c-11ea-b29b-9db42f7803a7_story.html

Judge cites Barr’s ‘misleading’ statements in ordering review of Mueller report redactions

By

Spencer S. Hsu and 

Devlin Barrett 

March 5, 2020 at 6:49 p.m. EST

A federal judge in D.C. sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr on Thursday for a “lack of candor,” questioning the truthfulness of the nation’s top law enforcement official in his handling of last year’s report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, overseeing a lawsuit brought by EPIC, a watchdog group, and BuzzFeed News, said he saw serious discrepancies between Barr’s public statements about Mueller’s findings and the public, partially redacted version of that report detailing the special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Read Judge Reggie B. Walton’s opinion on the Justice Department’s handling of the Mueller report

Because of those discrepancies, Walton ruled, the judge would conduct an independent review of Mueller’s full report to see if the Justice Department’s redactions were appropriate.

“In the Court’s view, Attorney General Barr’s representation that the Mueller Report would be ‘subject only to those redactions required by law or by compelling law enforcement, national security, or personal privacy interests’ cannot be credited without the Court’s independent verification in light of Attorney General Barr’s conduct and misleading public statements about the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote.

A spokeswoman for Barr declined to comment on the judge’s ruling.

It is highly unusual for a federal judge to publicly question the honesty of the attorney general, but Walton’s opinion comes amid growing rancor between the judicial branch of the government and the executive and legislative branches. Earlier Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he regretted comments he’d made about two conservative Supreme Court Justices — comments that drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. after many Republicans called them threatening. President Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly attacked federal judges, drawing condemnation from Democrats.

Read the Mueller Report

Mueller’s lengthy two-part report detailed the findings of his investigation into whether anyone on the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, and whether Trump tried to obstruct that investigation.

In March 2019, Barr issued a four-page letter describing what he called the principal conclusions of Mueller’s investigation, including that Mueller had decided not to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” about whether the president tried to obstruct justice. Barr said he therefore examined the evidence and determined Trump had not broken the law.

That letter frustrated Mueller, who complained to Barr that the attorney general’s description “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his team’s work and conclusions.

Mueller complained Barr’s letter did not fully capture his findings

At the time, Democrats accused Barr of soft-pedaling Mueller’s findings to discourage Congress from taking up a possible impeachment case against Trump for obstruction.

in his 23-page opinion, Walton said he had “grave concerns about the objectivity of the process” that led up to the public release of Mueller’s report.

“The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote. “These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr’s lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility.”

The judge said he would not take Justice Department lawyers at their word that redactions in the report were all done for appropriate reasons.

EPIC announced the judge’s decision in a news release and on social media, joined by Buzfeed reporter Jason Leopold, who tweeted, “This is what we hoped for!”

Walton’s decision is the latest indication of growing concern among federal judges in Washington about politicization at the Justice Department.

Last month, another federal judge in the same courthouse, Amy Berman Jackson, sentenced Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone to more than three years in prison, following an internal fight between Barr, his deputies, and career prosecutors over what sentence to recommend in that case.

Thursday’s opinion was not the first time Walton, appointed a U.S. district judge in 2001 by President George W. Bush, has criticized Barr and the Justice Department’s leadership under his tenure.

At a court hearing in the same case in April, Walton said Barr “has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency.”

Separately, in October, Walton called on U.S. prosecutors either to charge former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe or to drop their long-running investigation into whether he lied to investigators about a media disclosure, saying their indecision was undermining the credibility of the Justice Department by creating the appearance it was hounding one of Trump’s enemies.

At a Feb. 14 hearing, Walton noted Trump’s repeated personal attacks on McCabe raised concerns about the motives behind the investigation of the former FBI official.

“I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road and we have those type of statements being made that are conceivably, even if not, influencing the ultimate decision. I think there are a lot of people on the outside who perceive that there is undue inappropriate pressure being brought to bear,” Walton, said.

He added later: “I think as a government and as a society we’re going to pay a price at some point for this.”

 

it is about time.

[homersapien 11,453]

A judge just brutally rebuked William Barr. Democrats must act.

By

Greg Sargent 

Opinion writer

March 6, 2020 at 10:06 a.m. EST

The news that a federal judge has issued a scathing denunciation of William P. Barr’s dishonest shilling for President Trump should prompt House Democrats to get much more aggressive in their oversight of the attorney general. This is becoming urgent, yet Democrats have been oddly reluctant to pursue it.

While some Democrats will see such stepped-up oversight as a politically unpalatable relitigation of the past — a species of sore-loserism — this would ideally be all about what’s coming. It’s needed so we can be prepared for the unforeseeable ways that Barr might assist Trump with reelection.

The new rebuke of Barr, courtesy of federal district judge Reggie Walton, bluntly suggests that Barr misled the U.S. public for the express purpose of aiding Trump politically. The judge accuses Barr of a “lack of candor” in his representations of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, citing Barr’s highly dishonest summary that appeared designed to pre-spin its findings to protect Trump politically.

“This validated what we’ve been saying from the beginning — that Barr deliberately distorted the contents of the Mueller report to pull the wool over America’s eyes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, told me.

Walton’s criticism came in a lawsuit, brought by a watchdog group and BuzzFeed News, which seeks release of the full, unredacted Mueller report under the Freedom of Information Act. Amazingly, the unredacted report has still not been released, nearly a year after the redacted version was made available.

In his opinion, Walton indicates that he will now review the Justice Department’s redactions, to determine what might be made public. Walton states in unvarnished terms that this is needed precisely because of Barr’s previous covering for Trump:

The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.

A calculated attempt to influence public discourse in favor of Trump. This GOP-appointed judge adds that the “credibility” of the department’s justifications for its redactions is in doubt.

Hence the need to review those redactions, to determine whether they, too, were undertaken not for legitimate reasons, but in a corrupt manner to protect Trump.

Step it up, Democrats

All this opens the door for House Democrats to unleash the oversight hounds in a serious way, directed at Barr on numerous fronts.

This includes a more robust look at Barr’s handling of the Mueller investigation. Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, suggests to me that this could focus on several key questions:

• What incriminating matter about Trump did Barr’s Justice Department redact in the Mueller report, and what was the justification for it?
• Did Barr coordinate with the White House on those redactions?
• What sort of constraints did Barr put on the Mueller investigation? Were such constraints responsible for Mueller’s decision not to investigate Trump’s personal finances — which could have shed more light on links to Russia?
• Did Barr move to bring about a quick end to the Mueller investigation after taking over as attorney general?

It’s crucial to stress here that the utility of this would also be forward-looking. If we fully comprehend what Barr has been capable of doing on Trump’s behalf, we can more forthrightly reckon with what Barr is doing now for Trump, and what he might do heading into the election.

The pattern is unmistakable — and damning.

Barr’s Justice Department worked to keep the whistleblower complaint detailing Trump’s corrupt Ukraine scheme from Congress. Barr has undertaken a review of the Russia investigation that’s plainly designed to discredit its conclusions that Russia did interfere to help Trump. Barr has opened up a special channel to receive information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter directly from Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is Trump’s private lawyer and who is still apparently seeking such information.

Those last two undertakings have direct relevance to the coming election: Trump likely wants Barr’s help in undermining the idea that Russia helped him last time, in the apparent willingness to benefit from foreign interference again. And now that Biden is Trump’s likely opponent, the pipeline of “information” from Ukraine might suddenly become more important to Trump.

Let’s face it: Given what we’ve seen, we can’t rule out the possibility that Barr might use the tools of law enforcement to cast public doubt on the Democratic nominee and/or members of his family in some way.

On top of all that, Barr worked to reduce the department’s sentencing recommendation for Trump confidant Roger Stone after Trump raged over the case. That, too, demands more oversight: The Judiciary Committee is seeking the testimony of Stone’s prosecutors, but it’s unclear how aggressive Democrats will be to get it.

Barr is set to testify to the Judiciary Committee on March 31. All this will be central to Democratic questioning, but they must ramp up the oversight pressure going forward. “The attorney general has repeatedly elevated Trump’s political interests above the rule of law," Raskin told me, “and there’s no sign he’s stopping.”

“We need to establish our readiness to prevent the department from being used as an instrument of political advancement for the president,” Raskin continued, asserting that this is “a moving target that affects the current presidential campaign.”

Let’s hope that House Democratic leaders are listening.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/06/judge-just-brutally-rebuked-william-barr-democrats-must-act/

[AUFAN78 3,926]

On 3/6/2020 at 10:33 AM, homersapien said:

A judge just brutally rebuked William Barr. Democrats must act.

By

Greg Sargent 

Opinion writer

March 6, 2020 at 10:06 a.m. EST

The news that a federal judge has issued a scathing denunciation of William P. Barr’s dishonest shilling for President Trump should prompt House Democrats to get much more aggressive in their oversight of the attorney general. This is becoming urgent, yet Democrats have been oddly reluctant to pursue it.

While some Democrats will see such stepped-up oversight as a politically unpalatable relitigation of the past — a species of sore-loserism — this would ideally be all about what’s coming. It’s needed so we can be prepared for the unforeseeable ways that Barr might assist Trump with reelection.

The new rebuke of Barr, courtesy of federal district judge Reggie Walton, bluntly suggests that Barr misled the U.S. public for the express purpose of aiding Trump politically. The judge accuses Barr of a “lack of candor” in his representations of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, citing Barr’s highly dishonest summary that appeared designed to pre-spin its findings to protect Trump politically.

“This validated what we’ve been saying from the beginning — that Barr deliberately distorted the contents of the Mueller report to pull the wool over America’s eyes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, told me.

Walton’s criticism came in a lawsuit, brought by a watchdog group and BuzzFeed News, which seeks release of the full, unredacted Mueller report under the Freedom of Information Act. Amazingly, the unredacted report has still not been released, nearly a year after the redacted version was made available.

In his opinion, Walton indicates that he will now review the Justice Department’s redactions, to determine what might be made public. Walton states in unvarnished terms that this is needed precisely because of Barr’s previous covering for Trump:

The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.

A calculated attempt to influence public discourse in favor of Trump. This GOP-appointed judge adds that the “credibility” of the department’s justifications for its redactions is in doubt.

Hence the need to review those redactions, to determine whether they, too, were undertaken not for legitimate reasons, but in a corrupt manner to protect Trump.

Step it up, Democrats

All this opens the door for House Democrats to unleash the oversight hounds in a serious way, directed at Barr on numerous fronts.

This includes a more robust look at Barr’s handling of the Mueller investigation. Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, suggests to me that this could focus on several key questions:

• What incriminating matter about Trump did Barr’s Justice Department redact in the Mueller report, and what was the justification for it?
• Did Barr coordinate with the White House on those redactions?
• What sort of constraints did Barr put on the Mueller investigation? Were such constraints responsible for Mueller’s decision not to investigate Trump’s personal finances — which could have shed more light on links to Russia?
• Did Barr move to bring about a quick end to the Mueller investigation after taking over as attorney general?

It’s crucial to stress here that the utility of this would also be forward-looking. If we fully comprehend what Barr has been capable of doing on Trump’s behalf, we can more forthrightly reckon with what Barr is doing now for Trump, and what he might do heading into the election.

The pattern is unmistakable — and damning.

Barr’s Justice Department worked to keep the whistleblower complaint detailing Trump’s corrupt Ukraine scheme from Congress. Barr has undertaken a review of the Russia investigation that’s plainly designed to discredit its conclusions that Russia did interfere to help Trump. Barr has opened up a special channel to receive information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter directly from Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is Trump’s private lawyer and who is still apparently seeking such information.

Those last two undertakings have direct relevance to the coming election: Trump likely wants Barr’s help in undermining the idea that Russia helped him last time, in the apparent willingness to benefit from foreign interference again. And now that Biden is Trump’s likely opponent, the pipeline of “information” from Ukraine might suddenly become more important to Trump.

Let’s face it: Given what we’ve seen, we can’t rule out the possibility that Barr might use the tools of law enforcement to cast public doubt on the Democratic nominee and/or members of his family in some way.

On top of all that, Barr worked to reduce the department’s sentencing recommendation for Trump confidant Roger Stone after Trump raged over the case. That, too, demands more oversight: The Judiciary Committee is seeking the testimony of Stone’s prosecutors, but it’s unclear how aggressive Democrats will be to get it.

Barr is set to testify to the Judiciary Committee on March 31. All this will be central to Democratic questioning, but they must ramp up the oversight pressure going forward. “The attorney general has repeatedly elevated Trump’s political interests above the rule of law," Raskin told me, “and there’s no sign he’s stopping.”

“We need to establish our readiness to prevent the department from being used as an instrument of political advancement for the president,” Raskin continued, asserting that this is “a moving target that affects the current presidential campaign.”

Let’s hope that House Democratic leaders are listening.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/06/judge-just-brutally-rebuked-william-barr-democrats-must-act/

Reggie Walton is a name you should know. An old pal of Eric Holder—Obama’s attorney general and self-described “wingman,” the only attorney general in history, I believe, who has been held in contempt of Congress—Walton is senior district court judge for the District of Columbia Circuit.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/partisan-judge-strikes-at-william-barr-aims-at-trump_3265313.html

[homersapien 11,453]

16 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Reggie Walton is a name you should know. An old pal of Eric Holder—Obama’s attorney general and self-described “wingman,” the only attorney general in history, I believe, who has been held in contempt of Congress—Walton is senior district court judge for the District of Columbia Circuit.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/partisan-judge-strikes-at-william-barr-aims-at-trump_3265313.html

Why should I care about who his "old pals" (according to you) were? 

I am far more interested in the answers to these questions:

• What incriminating matter about Trump did Barr’s Justice Department redact in the Mueller report, and what was the justification for it?
• Did Barr coordinate with the White House on those redactions?
• What sort of constraints did Barr put on the Mueller investigation? Were such constraints responsible for Mueller’s decision not to investigate Trump’s personal finances — which could have shed more light on links to Russia?
• Did Barr move to bring about a quick end to the Mueller investigation after taking over as attorney general?

[AUFAN78 3,926]

6 hours ago, homersapien said:

Why should I care about who his "old pals" (according to you) were? 

I am far more interested in the answers to these questions:

• What incriminating matter about Trump did Barr’s Justice Department redact in the Mueller report, and what was the justification for it?
• Did Barr coordinate with the White House on those redactions?
• What sort of constraints did Barr put on the Mueller investigation? Were such constraints responsible for Mueller’s decision not to investigate Trump’s personal finances — which could have shed more light on links to Russia?
• Did Barr move to bring about a quick end to the Mueller investigation after taking over as attorney general?

You're partisan. You shouldn't care.