Barr filled that void by asserting there was no prosecutable case. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The process is poisoned before the report is even released.”Īccording to Barr’s March 24 letter, Mueller has presented evidence on both sides of the question without concluding whether to prosecute. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had “thrown out his credibility and the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect” Trump. The attorney general has said he was blacking out four types of information: grand jury information, intelligence sources and methods, potential interference with ongoing prosecutions, and information that would implicate privacy or reputation interest of peripheral players in the Trump-Russia probe.īut Democrats, who are demanding the release of the full, unredacted version, have heavily criticised Barr’s handling of the rollout of the report. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion,” added Barr, one of handful of people to have seen the report.īarr said Trump’s personal lawyers “were given the opportunity to read a final version of the redacted report before it was publicly released”, a revelation certain to infuriate congressional Democrats.īarr added that he will send the redacted version of the report, which is nearly 400 pages, to Congress at 11:00am (15:00GMT) on Thursday. “At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the president’s personal culpability. As he entered into office and sought to perform his responsibilities as president, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office and the conduct of some of his associates,” Barr said. “President Trump faced an unprecedented situation. Barr said Mueller did not reach a “prosecutorial judgment” and that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded the evidence was not sufficient to establish the president committed an offence. In a press conference on Thursday ahead of the redacted report’s release, Barr offered a spirited defence of President Donald Trump, emphasising that Mueller found no collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.īarr, a Trump appointee, said Mueller’s report recounts 10 episodes involving Trump that were investigated as potential acts of criminal obstruction of justice. US Attorney General William Barr has provided only a glimpse of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s report on the inquiry into Russia‘s role in the 2016 US election, with many details expected to emerge when a redacted version of the document is released on Thursday.
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