Jack Goldsmith On "Barr’s Remarkable Non-Commitments About the Mueller Report"

Jack Goldsmith--

Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002-2003

is on record that he expects Bill Barr to be a "great" Attorney General. For that reason his comments from Wednesday, 2/13/19, on Barr's confirmation hearing remarks as they relate to the release of all or part of the forthcoming Mueller report are well worth reading. Among other things you'll learn lots about what the special counsel regulations require in terms of a final report. But of most interest are his remarks that take off from John Dowd's stated expectation that there may well not be any report--or not one that is released to Congress or the public. And Dowd specifically noted that any Mueller report would have to go through an AG Barr.

Briefly, Goldsmith states:

“I don’t think there’ll be a report,” President Trump’s former attorney, John Dowd, recently told ABC News. “I will be shocked if anything regarding the president is made public, other than ‘We’re done.’” Referring to a possible report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Dowd suggested Mueller won’t release a detailed public accounting of the results of the investigation because he has nothing on Trump. 

Another reason there might not be a public report—or, at least, not much of one—is because William Barr, who will likely be attorney general by the end of the week, might not release one. It is Attorney General Barr’s decision, not Mueller’s, whether to give any information in Mueller’s report to Congress and the public. As we show in this post, Barr in his confirmation hearings committed himself to being transparent, consistent with a strict adherence to applicable laws and regulations. And the applicable laws and regulations require Barr to report very little to Congress or the public.  

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UPDATED: If Confirmed, Barr Will Be The Attorney General In Full

That, in effect, is what Bill Barr told Chuck Schumer today in a private meeting. Schumer asked Barr three questions and got straightforward answers. This is by Schumer's own account.

There's been a fair amount of disinformation put out about Barr, claims that he has made commitments with regard to the Mueller witchhunt, etc. The fact is that Barr has clearly stated that, if confirmed, he would exercise the full powers of the office of Attorney General with no prior restraints imposed upon himself. He said he would not fire Mueller "without cause," which is to say, he reserved the power to fire Mueller for cause. He said he wants the Mueller witchhunt to run its course, because he thinks that will be best for President Trump and the American people--and that he favors transparency for the same reason. No one who has been following this tawdry attempt to hamstring an elected president or even to run him out of office for purely political reasons can possibly suppose that the Deep State desires transparency.

So, on to Schumer's three questions.

First, Schumer asked Barr whether Barr would recuse himself if the Ethics Officer at DoJ said he should. Barr said he'd make his own decision. Barr will not be another Jeff Sessions.

Are You Kidding Me?

It's hard to overstate the debt of gratitude that conservatives owe to sundance at Conservative Tree House for the quantity and quality of information he has brought to bear on the Russia Hoax. Just yesterday he had an excellent reprise, tying various threads together: Why Flynn? – A Confluence of Highly Charged Political Events … Therefore to read the very same day such a ... I want to choose the right word ... deeply unserious blog by the same author is beyond disappointing. Way beyond. And yet that's truly about the kindest thing I can say about Solutions?

The problem for which sundance claims to have a solution is the institutional corruption of our federal justice system, specifically the politicization of the DoJ and FBI:

The institutions of the DOJ and FBI are corrupted; not just a few people within it, but rather the entire apparatus has been weaponized, over time, by participating political members who have politicized every function within the institution.

Let's grant the premise for the sake of the argument. What is sundance's solution?

Any solution has to come from a position external to the organization or the cycle will simply continue.

Putting a former U.S. DOJ official in charge of the DOJ, regardless of former term or professional/honorable intent, only maintains the status quo. The career mechanisms inside the organization will expel any action adverse to their interests, and the rules are set to aide their retention.

He's speaking here of Bill Barr, Trump's nominee to replace Jeff Sessions as AG. And so there's no chance that you'll mistake who he has in mind, he has a picture: