House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler wrote Attorney General Bill Barr Thursday to express his concerns over reports that members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team were frustrated with how Barr has handled their report so far.
Nadler said he found those reports “troubling” and called on Barr to release any summaries that the Mueller team had prepared for public consumption, as had been reported by the New York Times, the Washington Post and others.
“If these recent reports are accurate and the Special Counsel’s office prepared summaries ‘in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary,’ then those summaries should be publicly released as soon as possible,” Nadler said.
He added, however, that he was not backing down from Democratic House leaders’ request that Barr also hand over to Congress the full, unredacted report and underlying materials.
“Additionally, if the Special Counsel’s summaries fit the summary you provided on March 24, that would alleviate substantial concerns that the House Judiciary Committee may wish to discuss when you appear to testify,” Nadler wrote. “If there is significant daylight between his account and yours, the American people should know that too.”
Nadler’s letter noted that the Justice Department — in a statement responding to the reports of Mueller-Barr tension — did not deny that the summaries were submitted with the report Mueller gave Barr last month.
Given the recent reports, Nadler said he was also requesting that Barr “produce to the Committee all communications between the Special Counsel’s office and the Department regarding the report, including those regarding the disclosure of the report to Congress, the disclosure of the report to the public, and those regarding your March 24 letter that purports to ‘summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.'”
Read the letter below:
