Briefly Noted: DiGenova And Toensing Worked With Giuliani On Ukraine

So that must mean we should pay attention when they talk about Ukraine, since they likely know a lot about it all. And probably not just what was going on within Ukraine but also Ukraine connected activities within the US. As reported by Chris Wallace:

Rudy Giuliani was not the only attorney trying to get damaging information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials, and President Trump’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine this summer was made in spite of several federal agencies supporting the aid, Fox News’ Chris Wallace revealed on “Fox News Sunday.”

In addition to Giuliani, Washington, D.C., lawyers Joe DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing worked alongside the former New York City mayor. According to a top U.S. official, the three attorneys were working "off the books" -- not within the Trump administration -- and only the president knows the details of their work.

Can Barr Simply Release Mueller's Report?

I can't recommend highly enough Victoria Toensing's article today: Why Mueller's report (no matter how much Dems clamor for it) must be kept confidential. Recall that Bill Barr's confirmation hearing testimony regarding release of Mueller's report was studiedly non-committal. On the one hand, he forthrightly stated that he favored releasing as much as possible but, on the other hand, he rightly refused to commit himself ...

Barr said he envisions two reports, and only one for congressional and public consumption. 

Barr has said he takes seriously the “shall be confidential” part of the regulations governing Mueller’s report. He has noted that department protocol says internal memos explaining charging decisions should not be released. 

During his confirmation hearing, Barr said that he will draft, after Mueller turns in his report, a second one for the chairman and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees. But here again, the regulations provide little guidance for what such a report would say. 

The attorney general is required only to say the investigation has concluded and describe or explain any times when he or Rosenstein decided an action Mueller proposed “was so inappropriate or unwarranted” that it should not be pursued.

Barr indicated that he expects to use his report to share the results of Mueller’s investigation with the public, which the regulations allow him to do. But he hedged on specifics and said his plans could change after speaking with Mueller and Rosenstein.

What Toensing does, brilliantly, is explain what's at play here.

First of all, there has been a fair amount of loose talk in the media about Mueller's "report to Congress." Ain't no such beast. That's how the old Independent Counsel statute worked, but the Independent Counsel statute expired and was replaced with the current Special Counsel regulations. The IC reporting requirement was always constitutionally problematic, because it blurred the fundamental "separation of powers" structure of the Constitution. As Toensing explains (and I alluded to here), the Special Counsel regulations correct that problem: