In an effort to accommodate House Democrats who insist upon viewing the full Mueller Report, the DOJ made a minimally redacted version available to twelve congressional leaders. Only grand jury related content has been redacted because it is illegal for the DOJ to release it. As of Friday night, five Republicans had read this version and zero Democrats. 8% of the public version of the report was redacted and just 2% of the sealed report which was made available to the twelve congressional leaders was redacted.
CBS News legal analyst Jonathan Turley explains what this means.
Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material.
Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings.
So Congress now will ask a court to find civil contempt for Barr refusing to release grand jury information.
Interestingly, most of the redactions appear in Volume I of the report, the portion that deals with collusion.
Volume II of the report, the part that pertains to obstruction of justice, is 99.9 percent unredacted, which means it’s only 0.1% redacted. The National Review’s Jack Crowe writes that “only two full lines and seven partial lines” of Volume II are redacted.
So, this is what Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler is calling a constitutional crisis. This is why he is trying to hold Barr in contempt of congress. Nadler isn’t interested in reading the documents. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel wrote in Friday’s column, Nadler just wants “to put on a show.” This is political theatre.
The title of Turley’s article is, in fact, “Democrats showing contempt by holding William Barr in contempt.” He calls this a “superficial” charge which “could seriously undermine their credibility in the ongoing conflicts with the White House.”
Further, Turley said that House Democratic leaders are “violating a legal version of the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.” This could do great harm, not to Barr, but to the House. It is the weakest possible case to bring against the administration.”
Go read the report Jerry.
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