Latest in Mueller Documents
On May 25, the Justice Department released a redacted version of a 2019 memo that, according to the department, advised Attorney General William Barr on how to handle the Mueller report’s descriptions of possible obstruction of justice offenses committed by then-President Trump.
On May 3, Judge Amy Berman Jackson released an opinion chastising former Attorney General William Barr for his handling of the Mueller Report in 2019. The opinion specifically concerns Barr’s four-page public summary of the report released on March 24, 2019, which found that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
On Friday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified and released the transcripts of the December 2016 calls between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The calls are at the center of the ongoing criminal case again Flynn.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released 57 interview transcripts and several additional documents from the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
In a filing on Thursday, May 7, 2020, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the criminal information against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn had pleaded guilty to one count of lying to federal investigators regarding his contact with the Russian ambassador prior to President Donald Trump's inauguration. The filing, signed by U.S.
On March 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in Committee on the Judiciary v. Department of Justice that House of Representatives should have access to the redacted grand jury material referenced in the Mueller report.
Judge Reggie Walton’s ruling demanding in camera review of the unredacted Mueller report underscores how much the Trump administration has squandered the executive branch’s goodwill with the judiciary.
On Feb. 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed the House Judiciary Committee's lawsuit to compel the testimony of former White House Counsel Don McGahn. Writing on behalf of the court, Judge Thomas B. Griffith wrote, "The Department of Justice (DOJ), on behalf of McGahn, responds that Article III of the Constitution forbids federal courts from resolving this kind of interbranch information dispute. We agree and dismiss this case." The opinion is available here and below.
In a Jan. 29 court filing, government prosecutors backed away from an earlier recommendation that former national security adviser Michael Flynn serve up to six months in prison. Instead, prosecutors agreed with the defendant that probation remained a “reasonable sentence” that they would “not oppose.”
In its suit to obtain Mueller investigation grand jury materials, the House of Representatives has highlighted what it argues is a contradiction that "cannot be reconciled" between the Justice Department's position on impeachment and that expressed by President Trump's lawyers in his impeachment trial before the Senate. While the department has argued that a Senate impeachment trial is not a "judicial proceeding," the president's attorneys referred to the Senate as a "court" in the impeachment proceedings.