Attorney General Merrick Garland's release of a politically sensitive report differed sharply from how his predecessor, William P. Barr, handled the Mueller report.
and Mueller’s complaints became known, Barr faced a fresh round of criticism for his handling of the issue. A redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report was released to the public on April 18, 2019.
Here's what's in it. Garland received the Durham report on Friday and sent it to congressional leaders on Monday, shortly before the entire document was shared with reporters and posted online. He did not offer his own analysis or summary. “The difference in the rollout was stark,” said Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during President Barack Obama’s administration. “Garland did what he said he would do when he maintained the special counsel appointment of Durham. He let him continue his work independent of the department.”Anthony Coley, a former Justice Department spokesman for Garland, said the attorney general “played it by the book — minimum redactions, quick release of the total report — and left the public to draw its own conclusion. That’s how it should be done.” Garland faced a challenge of “landing Barr’s plane — this politically motivated investigation that was meant to appease a sitting president — and to do so in a way that didn’t further politicize the department,” Coley said. Barr did not immediately return a call seeking comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. While Democrats were quick to dismiss the Durham report, noting the lack of new revelations, Republicans seized on it in an effort to make the case for additional disclosures about FBI investigations related to President Biden’s family.Sen. Charles E. Grassley said in a written statement that the report “validates the concerns I’ve raised since we first learned of the bogus investigation in 2017. The FBI allowed itself to be hijacked and weaponized by political actors to target a political rival during a presidential election and administration. Restoring its integrity, if that’s even possible, will take humility, transparency and accountability.” The FBI said in a statement that it had already implemented “dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.” Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, called the Durham investigation a failure, but said he expects Republicans to use snippets of the report to claim victory and portray the FBI negatively.“If the goal was those multiple indictments, he failed miserably,” Figliuzzi said, alluding to past predictions by Trump that the probe would uncover significant crimes. “The consolation seems to be sound bites in a political product for Fox News.” Partisan fights over how the Justice Department investigates politicians are nothing new. But the stakes have grown significantly in recent years, as prosecutors and agents have conducted high-profile inquiries into presidential candidates, from Hillary Clinton to Trump to Biden.revealed that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Barr also said that Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and determined it was insufficient to support such a charge. That determination, in particular, rankled Democrats, who viewed it as prejudging a question that Mueller may have meant for Congress to consider.Days after Barr’s memo was released, Mueller wrote to the attorney general, complaining that the memo “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his team’s work. The letter urged Barr to quickly release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made initial suggested redactions for doing so. Republican lawmakers are seeking to have Durham testify about his findings, perhaps next week. So far, there does not seem to be the kind of tension that marked the previous special counsel report. In a letter sent to Garland on Friday along with the report, Durham thanked the attorney general for “permitting our inquiry to proceed independently.”
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