Opinion: We can’t trust William Barr to decide how much of Mueller’s findings we see, paulwaldman1 writes
By Paul Waldman Paul Waldman Opinion writer covering politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer April 1 at 12:26 PM Give Republicans credit for this: Convincing everyone to take Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary of Robert S. Mueller III’s report on the Russia scandal as proof that President Trump is innocent of every allegation, “a cloud has been lifted” from his presidency, and the whole matter has come to an end was one of the most extraordinary PR coups in recent memory.
There are reasons to be skeptical, to say the least. Imagine, as some have posited, what the reaction would have been from both Republicans and the media if Ken Starr had delivered his report on the Lewinsky scandal to Janet Reno, who kept it from the public but wrote a four-page letter concluding that Bill Clinton was not guilty of any crimes.
Now Barr says he will release a version of the nearly 400-page report, albeit one that contains redactions in four areas: grand jury information, information that could reveal intelligence “sources and methods,” information related to investigations that are still ongoing, and information related to “peripheral third parties” who were caught up in the investigation but committed no wrongdoing themselves.
To be clear, this isn’t about whether the full report without redactions will be made public. It’s about whether select members of Congress will be able to see the unredacted version. If Barr and his aides do their jobs as they’re supposed to, Nadler would presumably say afterward that having seen both versions, he can attest that all the redactions were appropriate and that the public can learn all it needs to know from the redacted version.
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