Opinion - The House Must See the Whole Mueller Report

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Apr 1, 2019 at 10:29 AM 171

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Opinion - The House Must See the Whole Mueller Report

Someday, Trump will not be in office. Congress needs a full accounting of his misdeeds to ensure they don’t happen again.

By Jerrold L. Nadler
Mr. Nadler is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
April 1, 2019

Last Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent us a letter summarizing what he says are the “principal conclusions” of the special counsel, Robert Mueller. The next day, together with five other committee chairmen, I wrote back to the attorney general, demanding that he provide us with the full Mueller report — not a summary, but the full report and all of the relevant evidence — by April 2.

For nearly two years, the country has waited to read the report. Over those many months, President Trump has raged against the institutions that make our democracy possible — among them, the free press, the courts and his own Department of Justice. When the special counsel indicted members of the president’s inner circle, his attacks got louder.

Before the formal investigation began, Mr. Trump fired his F.B.I. director. He later fired his attorney general. He reportedly attempted to fire the special counsel himself. Despite this profoundly unacceptable behavior, the special counsel persevered and wrote his report.

We — the members of the Judiciary Committee, the House of Representatives and the entire American public — are still waiting to see that report. We will not wait much longer. We have an obligation to read the full report, and the Department of Justice has an obligation to provide it, in its entirely, without delay. If the department is unwilling to produce the full report voluntarily, then we will do everything in our power to secure it for ourselves.

The entire reason for appointing the special counsel was to protect the investigation from political influence. By offering us his version of events in lieu of the report, the attorney general, a recent political appointee, undermines the work and the integrity of his department. He also denies the public the transparency it deserves. We require the full report — the special counsel’s words, not the attorney general’s summary or a redacted version.

We require the report, first, because Congress, not the attorney general, has a duty under the Constitution to determine whether wrongdoing has occurred. The special counsel declined to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on the question of obstruction, but it is not the attorney general’s job to step in and substitute his judgment for the special counsel’s.

That responsibility falls to Congress — and specifically to the House Judiciary Committee — as it has in every similar investigation in modern history. The attorney general’s recent proposal to redact the special counsel’s report before we receive it is unprecedented. We require the evidence, not whatever remains after the report has been filtered by the president’s political appointee.

On its face, the attorney general’s letter raises more questions than it answers. He tells us, for instance, that he declined to charge the president with obstruction in part because there was no underlying crime to obstruct.

Did he discuss that conclusion with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — who, while a federal prosecutor, routinely charged individuals with obstruction without charging the underlying crime? Did the attorney general forget that the special counsel indicted 37 other people, including the president’s campaign manager, deputy campaign manager and former national security adviser, for various crimes, including conspiracy against the United States? Did he lose track of his own prosecutors, who effectively named the president as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Southern District of New York?

Second, we require the report because Congress has a role that is fundamentally different from that of the Department of Justice. The special counsel’s mandate was narrow: investigate allegedly criminal conduct stemming from links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Our job is to hold the president accountable any time he undermines the rule of law, and is not limited to his involvement with the Russian government during the campaign.

Whether or not the president could have been charged with a crime, even the attorney general acknowledges the existence of evidence that has so far been hidden from view. We have every reason to suspect that the unedited obstruction section of the Mueller report resembles the report that Congress received from the Watergate grand jury in 1974. That evidence showed that President Richard Nixon had attempted to obstruct justice. It did not recommend that the president should be prosecuted. It did not say the president should be impeached. It simply stated the evidence so that Congress could do its job.

Finally, we require the report because one day, one way or another, the country will move on from President Trump. We must make it harder for future presidents to behave this way. We need a full accounting of the president’s actions to do that work.

When the full scope of the president’s misconduct has been revealed, when his lies are debunked and his abuses have been laid bare, I believe that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will draft legislation to curb the worst of his offenses. Put another way: If President Trump’s behavior wasn’t criminal, then perhaps it should have been.

Related
More on the Mueller report.

Opinion | The Editorial Board
No Collusion, No ‘Exoneration’
March 24, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/opinion/mu...pe=Article

Opinion | Neal K. Katyal
The Many Problems With the Barr Letter
March 24, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/opinion/ba...pe=Article

Opinion | David Leonhardt
William Barr, Media Handler
March 26, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/opinion/wi...pe=Article

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opinion/mu...trump.html

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