Mueller’s Report Is The Beginning, Not The End

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FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | February 21, 2019freadshot

“Whatever Mueller’s report contains, Congress and ultimately the public must have access to the full report. “

There are stories this week that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may submit his final report on the Russia investigation as early as next week.

If he does, Justice Department regulations provide that he “shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.” The regulations further state that the Attorney General, now William Barr, should provide Congress with “brief notifications, with an outline of the actions and the reasons for them.”

Obviously, we do not know what the Special Counsel’s report will contain. But former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal published an op-ed in The New York Times today presenting his views on this entitled: “The Mueller Report Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect.”

Whatever the report contains, Congress and ultimately the public must have access to the full report. 

As Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated, “A ‘summary’ is not going to cut it. Congress needs to see the Special Counsel’s findings ‘in their entirety’ and an unclassified report should then be released to the public.”

Once this matter is resolved, the investigation will switch to the Democratic-controlled House where Committees will continue the search to get to the bottom of what happened in the 2016 presidential election, and to consider whether the President acted to obstruct the Mueller investigation, regardless of whether criminal acts occurred.

As Mr. Katyal said in his op-ed today, “A short Mueller report would mark the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.”

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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.