Documents: Justice Department Defends Mueller Report Redaction Process and Chairman Nadler Responds

On Thursday, Justice Department Spokesperson Kerri Kupec released a statement, included in full below, regarding Attorney General Bill Barr's letter concerning the Mueller report. The statement followed reporting from the New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News that members of Mueller's team have voiced concerns over Barr's portrayal of the report's contents.

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. Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the Attorney General decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately — without attempting to summarize the report — with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process. As the Attorney General stated in his March 29th letter to Chairman Graham and Chairman Nadler, he does not believe the report should be released “in serial or piecemeal fashion.” The Department continues to work with the Special Counsel on appropriate reductions to the report so that it can be released to Congress and the public.

Thursday afternoon, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler responded, urging Barr to release the summaries of the Mueller report allegedly prepared by Mueller’s staff and described in news reports. The letter is available below.