Russia Investigation
On Monday, Nadler wrote in an op-ed int he New York Times:
- “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 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.”
- “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.”
On Wednesday, Nadler authorized but did not issue a subpoena for the un-redacted Mueller report and documents.
Also on Wednesday the New York Times was able to report on the thinking of people who have some insight into both Mueller team investigators and Barr. These people are telling reporters that some on Mueller’s team are concerned that Barr released a summary that does not reflect the damming evidence contained in the actual Mueller report; that Barr’s summary left out those damming details because he was “wary of departing from Justice Department practice not to disclose derogatory details in closing an investigation”; that there were multiple summaries Mueller prepared but which Barr did not use.
Hours later, at 1AM on Thursday, the Washington Post published their version of the same story:
- “members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.”
- Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said.
- Unlike the Time’s story, this one has actual quotes from sources: “There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according one U.S. official briefed on the matter.
“It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
A DOJ spokesman released a statement on Thursday justifying their decision not to release the Mueller summaries: “Every page of the “confidential report” provided to Attorney General Barr on March 22, 2019 was marked “May Contain Material Protected Under Fed. R Crim. P. 6(e)” – a law that protects confidential grand jury information – and therefore could not be publicly released.” Nadler wrote back that “a precautionary marking should not be an impediment to public production in a very short period of time.” He also requested documents of any communication between Barr’s office and the Special Counsel’s office. Read both letters here.
In Other News
The House Ways and Means Committee requested 6 years of Trump’s tax returns from the IRS, due by April 10. Trump’s lawyers have advised the IRS not to turn over the tax returns.
A whistle blower who works in the White House has told Congress that at least 25 people in the administration have been granted security clearances despite being disqualified by career professionals: “foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use and criminal conduct,” the memo said.
The US government is now saying it will take two years to locate all the families separated at the border. They will apply statistical analysis “to about 47,000 children who were referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and subsequently discharged.” This is necessary because they collected no data on apprehended families prior to April 2018, and thousands were separated before that.
The US government is now saying it will take two years to locate all the families separated at the border. They will apply statistical analysis “to about 47,000 children who were referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and subsequently discharged.” This is necessary because they collected no data on apprehended families prior to April 2018, and thousands were separated before that.
News broke of a Chinese woman trying to smuggle a thumb drive into Mar-A-Lago, raising security concerns since Trump spends so much time there.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.2%