Ordering the memo's release, Jackson, an Obama appointee, also determined that the Justice Department lacked candor with the court in its descriptions of the role and purpose of the 2019 memo prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel. The decision echoed a 2021 ruling from Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who accused Barr of being "disingenuous" in his initial public description of Mueller's findings. Writing for the DC Circuit panel, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan found that Barr never seriously considered charging Trump with obstruction, writing that the OLC review amounted to an "academic exercise" and a "thought experiment." The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, in a unanimous decision, rejected the Justice Department's arguments that the memo was protected from public release by the so-called deliberative process privilege, which shields details about government decision-making from public disclosure. He said that in fact, Mueller's determination - or lack thereof - was prompted by the inconclusive nature of the evidence. When Barr held a news conference shortly before a redacted version of Mueller's report was released in 2019, he told reporters that the special counsel's decision was not influenced by the longstanding department policy. But the special counsel declined to make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment," citing a 1973 Justice Department memo that dated back to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal that sided against indicting a sitting president. It spelled out 11 instances in which Trump potentially obstructed justice in the course of the inquiry, including the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and attempts to have Mueller fired as well. Mueller's team ultimately issued a 448-page report summing up its findings in the years-long investigation into Russia's election interference. Trump's 11 instances of possible obstruction Referring to that second volume, top Justice Department officials Steven Engel and Edward O'Callaghan wrote in their memo that the evidence "is not, in our judgment, sufficient to support a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the President violated the obstruction-of-justice statutes." Engel authored the memo as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, a unit tasked with weighing some of the thorniest legal questions faced by the executive branch.įormer Special Counsel Robert Mueller III laid out 11 episodes of possible obstruction by Trump during the Russia inquiry. At the time, the Justice Department had not yet released the Mueller report, which was divided into two volumes - the first involving the inquiry into Russia's interference, the second concerning whether Trump illegally sought to obstruct the investigation itself. In their preparation of the 2019 memo, a pair of top Trump-appointed Justice Department officials relied on a more than 400-page report in which Mueller summarized the findings of his special counsel team's investigation. The 9-page memo's release, in response to a court order, sheds additional light on one of the most climatic and controversial moments of the Trump presidency: whether he should face a federal indictment for trying to stop the Mueller probe itself. The Justice Department on Wednesday released a once-secret 2019 memo that recommended against charging then-President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
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