House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler on Sunday said Attorney General William Barr should release the full report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller without redactions, saying there could be information in the report that are grounds for impeachment or other actions.
Mr. Nadler, New York Democrat, also said he didn’t put much stock in Mr. Barr’s recent summary of the report, calling him a “biased defender” of the Trump administration.
“We are demanding and we have a right, the Congress has a right to the entire report with no redactions whatsoever so we can see what’s there,” Mr. Nadler said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
The Justice Department has indicated that every page of Mr. Mueller’s final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election could contain confidential grand jury information, and Mr. Nadler acknowledged lawmakers could have to go to court to secure those parts.
Mr. Nadler said it’s unclear what the rest of the report will turn up.
“Who knows? There could be grounds for impeachment. There could be grounds for other action,” he said. “You can commit shameful acts. You can commit complete betrayals of the public interest without committing impeachable acts. And if you did that, the public ought to know that, too.”
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In a four-page summary of the report, Mr. Barr said last month that it did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. The summary also said the report didn’t conclude the president obstructed justice after the fact, but that it also didn’t exonerate him.
Mr. Nadler said he didn’t put much stock in Mr. Barr’s summary.
“I dismiss what he said - he’s a biased defender of the administration,” he said. “He’s entitled to be a defender of the administration, but he is not entitled to withhold the evidence from Congress.”
But Rudolph Giuliani, who is part of the president’s legal team, said later on the program that it’s Mr. Nadler who has pre-judged the case.
“I didn’t appreciate his suggestion the attorney general be biased,” Mr. Giuliani said, calling Mr. Barr a man of the “highest integrity.”
Mr. Giuliani said he isn’t concerned that the full report could be damaging for Mr. Trump, despite recent news reports that indicated members of Mr. Mueller’s team have expressed concerns about how Mr. Barr framed the primary conclusions of the report.
“I guarantee you, other than little quibbles, I’m not worried about the report at all,” Mr. Giuliani said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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