Attorney General Bill Barr indicated to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) that the Justice Department would not meet House Democrats’ April 2 deadline for releasing special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Nadler told reporters Wednesday.
During a roughly 10-minute phone call, Barr said he would turn over a version of the report in a matter of weeks not months, but he couldn’t get more specific, Nadler said.
Barr also declined to commit to releasing the full report, unredacted, as well as the underlying evidence, according to Nadler.
“We’re not happy about that, to put it mildly,” Nadler said.
He said that Democrats were still treating their April 2 deadline —set in a letter that six House committee chairs sent to Barr on Monday — as a hard deadline. But he played coy when asked what next steps, such as a subpoena, he’d be willing to take if that deadline was not met.
“We’ll wait until after April 2 and then we’ll make those decision,” Nadler said.
Nadler said he was told how long Mueller’s report was, calling it “very substantial,” but would not confirm the claim by a Fox News pundit that it was 700 pages. Nadler said he was told not to publicly disclose the number of pages.
He did not discuss on the call Barr’s decision not to charge President Trump with obstruction nor did they discuss the the substance of the report, according to Barr.
Nadler said that the attorney general had agreed to testify in front of his committee and that they expected to call him “reasonably soon.”
“We may very well want Mueller [to testify] after Barr,” Nadler said, adding that it was a decision lawmakers would make when they know more.
If there were a time for marching, now would suffice.
Gee, Jerry. Don’t you know Barr’s specialty is making things disappear, like the Iran-Contra treason?
I guess they don’t have a clue how bad this looks. Once the stonewalling really sinks in, even fewer people will believe what Barr’s summation had to say.
Wait a minute, didn’t the Senator from SC say Barr would release the report in April? Isn’t April 2nd in the month of April? Or has Emperor No Clothes Trump remade the Julian calendar?
If there was ever a need for a Pentagon Papers-size leak, it’s now.