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Federal Judge Ordered The DOJ To Release A Memo That Bill Barr Used To Clear Trump Of Obstruction Of Justice, Saying 'It Is Time For The Public To See' It


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Business Insider

A federal judge ordered the DOJ to release a memo that Bill Barr used to clear Trump of obstruction of justice, saying 'it is time for the public to see' it

 
 
Sonam Sheth
Tue, May 4, 2021, 1:32 PM
 
 
GettyImages-william-barr
 
Former Attorney General William Barr. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
  • A federal judge ordered the DOJ to turn over an internal memo related to the Mueller probe.

  • Bill Barr cited the memo as the basis for his decision to clear Trump of obstruction of justice.

  • "It is time for the public to see that [the memo], too," the judge said in Tuesday's ruling.

 

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Justice Department to turn over an internal memo that then-Attorney General Bill Barr cited as justification for clearing then-President Donald Trump of obstructing justice.

Barr said at the time that he'd come to his decision "in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and other Department lawyers" but did not publicize the OLC's memo. In response, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to obtain the memo.

In Tuesday's ruling, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the unreleased OLC memo that Barr used to clear Trump of obstruction actually "contradicts" his claim that the decision to charge the president was "under his purview" because the special counsel Robert Mueller did not "resolve the question of whether the evidence would support a prosecution."

Barr announced the decision to clear Trump in a four-page letter to Congress in March 2019 summarizing Mueller's findings in the FBI's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 US election.

 

"The letter asserted that the Special Counsel 'did not draw a conclusion - one way or the other - as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,' and it went on to announce the Attorney General's own opinion that 'the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,'" Jackson wrote.

However, the OLC's memo "calls into question the accuracy of Attorney General Barr's March 24 representation to Congress," and it "raises serious questions about how the Department of Justice could make this series of representations to a court," the ruling said.

Jackson pointed out that Mueller himself criticized Barr's handling of the public release of the report and his description of the special counsel's conclusions.

On April 18, 2019, Barr "appeared before Congress to deliver the report," Jackson wrote. "He asserted that he and the Deputy Attorney General reached the conclusion he had announced in the March 24 letter 'in consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel and other Department lawyers.'"

"What remains at issue today is a memorandum to the Attorney General dated March 24, 2019, that specifically addresses the subject matter of the letter transmitted to Congress," she added, referring to the OLC memo.

She continued: "It is time for the public to see that, too."

Mueller's findings in the obstruction investigation were widely discussed when his final report was released in April 2019. He laid out 11 potential instances of obstruction by Trump, but declined to make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment."

Barr told reporters Mueller's decision was not influenced by longstanding Justice Department guidelines that state a sitting president cannot be indicted. He said that in fact, Mueller's determination - or lack thereof - was prompted by the inconclusive nature of the evidence.

But in his report, Mueller did not cite the nature, or absence, of evidence as the reason he did not come to a decision on obstruction. He did, however, cite the OLC's 1973 memo saying that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.

Moreover, the special counsel's team said that "if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state." The team continued: "Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment."

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-judge-ordered-doj-release-173202128.html

 

GO RV, then BV 

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10 minutes ago, nstoolman1 said:

Funny how libs always demand transparecy when it comes to conservatives but pull the blinds, turn out the lights, slam the door shut and toss the key when it comes to conservatives wanting transparecy. 

 

I'm curious to read the memo, aren't you?

 

GO RV, then BV

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42 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

I'm curious to read the memo, aren't you?

 

GO RV, then BV

If it comes out it will be used as a weapon, even if it is not what the dems want. They will twist it until they make it sound bad enough and then it will be right back to "get Trump" so no, I don't want to see it or have it come out. 

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The Daily Beast

A Federal Judge Finds That Bill Barr Was a Fixer and Corrupter of Justice

 
 
Lloyd Green
Wed, May 5, 2021, 10:31 AM
 
 
Drew Angerer
 
Drew Angerer

What remains of Bill Barr’s sullied reputation was blown up when federal district Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the government must turn over the memorandum, which the public has yet to fully see and that the Justice Department relied upon in declining to prosecute the 45th president.

Not only was Barr being personally “disingenuous” by announcing his decision before the Mueller report was released and pretending he used the report to reach a conclusion instead of simply announcing the one he’d come to beforethe special counsel’s work had even finished his work, she wrote, “but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court.”

“The fact that (Trump) would not be prosecuted was a given,” the judge wrote. In reality, it was a given from the moment Barr was appointed by Trump, as the past inevitably became prelude given his first stint as attorney general under George H.W. Bush. Back then, DOJ resisted efforts to get to the bottom of U.S. government-backed financing of Iraq in the run-up to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

Mueller Report Has a Hidden Message for Barr

Pressed by House Democrats to appoint an independent counsel, Barr refused, while insisting it was “not a crime,” “simply not criminal in any way,” “nothing illegal.” What he meant was that oversight was for Democratic presidents only.

In 2019, Barr stonewalled then Sen. Kamala Harris when she asked him whether Donald Trump or anyone at the White House had inquired or urged that he open an investigation into anyone.  

Watch: Kamala Harris asks Barr whether the White House has asked him to investigate anyone

Think of Barr as an updated version of Roy Cohn, an earlier Trump lawyer. Both men attended Horace Mann, the swank private school in the Riverdale section of New York City, and Columbia University. As with Cohn, things are not ending well for Barr. 

For the record, Judge Jackson’s recent opinion was not written on a blank slate. Judge Reggie Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, had already blasted Barr’s allergy to the truth. In a March 2020 decision in a related case, the judge “seriously” questioned Barr’s integrity and credibility, and deployed words like “distorted” and “misleading” to make his point.

He also observed that it appeared that Barr had “made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”

DOJ is not a public relations shop. Likewise, the department’s client is the U.S., not the occupant of the Oval Office. The imperial presidency is supposed to have limits.

Barr’s reputation also stands to be tarnished by his efforts to put his thumb on the scale in connection with the sentencing of a since-pardoned Roger Stone and the Mike Flynn debacle. Like Stone, Flynn too received a Trump pardon. But along the way, Barr’s handling of Flynn’s case raised eyebrows from the bench.

Specifically, Judge Emmet Sullivan hammered Barr while dismissing, at the DOJ’s request, its own case against Flynn after he had pleaded guilty. Sullivan observed, “In view of the government’s previous argument in this case that Mr. Flynn’s false statements were ‘absolutely material’ because his false statements ‘went to the heart’ of the FBI’s investigation, the government’s about-face, without explanation, raises concerns about the regularity of its decision-making process.”

“Raises concerns”? Talk about understatement.

By the end of Trump’s term, Flynn would call for the imposition of martial law. Meanwhile, Flynn’s brother, Charles Flynn, another general, was on duty during the insurrection. To top it all off, Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, would emerge as a grim punchline in attempting to “release the Kraken” to try and push through Trump’s Big Lie.

As for the Flynn pardon, it happened on Barr’s watch, on November 25, 2020, more than two weeks before Barr quit. And here too, Barr’s past is relevant.

After Bush 41 lost to Bill Clinton, Barr successfully pushed for pardons for Caspar Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, and others in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal. “I favored the broadest pardon authority,” Barr explained. There were some people just arguing just for Weinberger. I said, ‘No–in for a penny, in for a pound.’”

To his credit, Barr resisted Trump’s entreaties to find fraud with the election where none existed and, when he finally quit, the outgoing AG took a swipe at Trump and his efforts to undo the election results, and tried to suggest there was still some regularity to DOJ’s decision-making process by declaring that “it is incumbent on all levels of government, and all agencies acting within their purview, to do all we can to assure the integrity of elections and promote public confidence in their outcome.”

Much too little, too late. Meanwhile, AG Merrick Garland has until May 17 to appeal Judge Jackson’s ruling. If he does not, the full memo that Barr used when he was the attorney general to justify the fix that was already in will immediately become public—and the fixer’s reputation will take one more hard hit as his successor begins the hard work of restoring integrity and public confidence in a battered Justice Department.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-judge-finds-bill-barr-143111826.html

 

GO RV, then BV

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When you research Judge Amy Berman 

Jackson you will find she was an Obama appointee....a Harvard Grad and worked for CNN as a legal contributor.

 

She is the definition of a politicised Judicial system.

 

Her rulings coming out of the DC district are consistant with the politics of the district.....80% Democrat....frankly she is just a hack Judge for the left......and of course the left loving MLM makes her out to be God's gift.....

JMO.   CL

 

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On 5/4/2021 at 2:48 PM, Shabibilicious said:

 

I'm curious to read the memo, aren't you?

 

GO RV, then BV

 

The memo really doesn't matter.  In Mueller's testimony, Mueller said President Trump didn't obstruct justice.

 

.

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