Court Will Review Unredacted Mueller Report - "Candor" and "Credibility" Matters

U.S. District Court Reggie Walton issued an order today stating that he would review in camera the unredacted version of the Mueller Report to determine whether the withheld material comports with FOIA exemptions.  But the Court's Order also sends a message on the importance of truthful transparency.  The court in comparing the redacted Mueller Report with Attorney General Barr's comments states in part:

"The Court has grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report and its impact on the Department's subsequent justifications that is redactions of the Mueller Report are authorized by the FOIA."

"The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller's principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report, causes the Court to question whether Attorney General Barr's intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report - a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report."

"[t]he Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report. The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr's statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements, cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr 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.

These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr's lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr's credibility and in turn, the Department's representation that 'all of the information redacted from the version of the [Mueller] Report released by [ ] Attorney General [Barr]' is protected from disclosure by its claimed FOIA exemptions."

The Order can be found from the link on the Electronic Privacy Information Center's webpage here.

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