AG Barr: ‘Within a Week I Will Be in a Position to Release the Mueller Report to the Public’

EXCERPT:

BARR: “The letter of the 24th — Mr. Mueller’s team did not play a role in drafting that document, although we offered him the opportunity to review it before we sent it out and he declined that. The letter on the 29th, I don’t believe that that was reviewed by Mr. Mueller or that they participated in drafting that letter. But to go back to something you said in the opening statement about the availability of the report, as I’ve said, as you pointed out since my confirmation, I do think it’s important that the public have an opportunity to learn the results of the special counsel’s work. And I said then that I would work diligently to make as much information public as I could and available to Congress as I could. You will recognize that I’m operating under a regulation that was put together during the Clinton Administration and does not provide for the publication of the report. But I am relying on my own discretion to make it as much public as I can. Now, in my letter of March 29th, I identified four areas that I feel should be redacted and I think most people would agree. The first is grand jury information, 6-E material. The second is information that the intelligence community believes would reveal intelligence sources and methods. The third are information in the report that could interfere with ongoing prosecutions. You will recall that the Special Counsel did spin off a number of cases that are still being pursued and we want to make sure that none of the information in the report would impinge upon either the ability of the prosecutors to prosecute the cases or the fairness to the defendants. And finally, we intend to redact information that implicates the privacy or reputational interest of peripheral players where there is a decision not to charge them. Right now the Special Counsel is working with us on identifying information in the reports that fall under those four categories. We will color-code the excisions from the report and we will provide explanatory notes describing the basis for each redaction. For example, if a redaction is made because of a court order in a pending prosecution, we’ll state that and we will distinguish between the various categories. This process is going along very well and my original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands. And so I think that from my standpoint, within a week, I will be in a position to release the report to the public. And then I will engage with the chairman of both judiciary committees about that report, about any further requests that they have.”