Barr letter

The Barr letter is a four-page letter sent on March 24, 2019, from Attorney General William Barr to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees purportedly detailing the "principal conclusions" of the Mueller report of the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States presidential election, allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, and allegations of obstruction of justice.

Even before seeing the Mueller report, Barr had already decided to clear Trump of obstruction. To this end, he tasked the Office of Legal Counsel with writing a memo that would justify this decision. The Barr letter was written over the course of two days in tandem with the legal memo on which the letter ostensibly relied.^[1]

After the release of the redacted report on April 18, 2019, Barr's letter was criticized as a deliberate mischaracterization of the Mueller Report and its conclusions, and as an attempt at spinning the media narrative to undermine Mueller's investigation.^[2]^[3] In March 2020, a federal judge sharply criticized Barr's characterizations and ordered the Justice Department to provide him the redacted portions from the public version of the report so he could determine if they were justified. Following litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, the Justice Department released the full text of the memorandum in August 2022.^[4]

^ Cite error: The named reference backs ruling was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Sullivan, Margaret (November 10, 2019). "Media beware: Impeachment hearings will be the trickiest test of covering Trump". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 10, 2019. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
^ Toobin, Jeffrey (June 29, 2020). "Why the Mueller Investigation Failed". The New Yorker. In just two days, without speaking to the authors of the report about their evidence or their conclusions, Barr and Rosenstein asserted that they had digested hundreds of pages of dense findings and decided that the President had not committed a crime. The letter was an obvious act of sabotage against Mueller and an extraordinary gift to the President. By leaving the disclosure of the report and its conclusions entirely up to Barr, Mueller had brought this disaster on himself and his staff.
^ Cite error: The named reference releases memo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[backs_ruling-1] Cite error: The named reference backs ruling was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[2] Sullivan, Margaret (November 10, 2019). "Media beware: Impeachment hearings will be the trickiest test of covering Trump". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 10, 2019. Retrieved November 11, 2019.

[3] Toobin, Jeffrey (June 29, 2020). "Why the Mueller Investigation Failed". The New Yorker. In just two days, without speaking to the authors of the report about their evidence or their conclusions, Barr and Rosenstein asserted that they had digested hundreds of pages of dense findings and decided that the President had not committed a crime. The letter was an obvious act of sabotage against Mueller and an extraordinary gift to the President. By leaving the disclosure of the report and its conclusions entirely up to Barr, Mueller had brought this disaster on himself and his staff.

[releases_memo-4] Cite error: The named reference releases memo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]