Barr Will Decide How Much of Mueller Report To Release

attorney Fort Nevada. Thanks for joining us, Greg, Thank you. First, let me get your reaction to Lindsay Graham wanting to start an investigation into the Clinton campaign and a g Loretta Lynch and more well. As the relatively new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Gram is in a position to initiate UH investigations of that type if he

if he decides that should be a committee priority. But I would point out that the d o J Office of Inspector General did a very comprehensive in action investigation of the Department's activities and the FBI's activities relative to the Clinton investigation and is currently conducting hasn't completed yet, an investigation of certain UH the the FAISO warrants that related to the background on the so called Russia investigation.

So there is quite a bit of investigative activity already, and so we'll just have to see if Senator Graham decides that, on top of all of that, that a Senate Committee investigation is also warranted. Now let's turn to the summary done by the Attorney General William Barr. He did a four paid summary over forty eight hours after a two year investigation, with not even a full sentence, quoting from the special counsel's report itself. What are you

confident that Special Counsel Muller himself determined. Well, it appears from the summary, and of course the at least the Democrats on Capital have been and will continue to demand production of the entire report. But it's clear from the four page summary that the Special Counsel did not find sufficient evidence of any criminal wrongdoing to seek further indictments, including potential charges against the president. UH. And so that's

the good news for the president. What is is not clear, um, But but what the letter suggests uh and needs clarification or two things. One is that the letter quotes from in part the Mueller report in saying that the report UH or the investigation did not exonerate the president everyone of course is wondering what what that means exactly, and

that deserves some explanation. And then secondly, the letter also appears to suggest that the Special Counsel deferred to the Attorney General with respect to making a final call on whether the president engaged an obstruction of justice. That has raised a lot of questions in Washington, because, of course, the Special Counsel's mandate was to conduct this investigation so that and make decisions relating to the investigation, including the outcome, so that Trump appointees at d o J would not

be making those decisions. And so to the extent that the Special Conswer deferred to the a G on the obstruction issue, that that is raising a lot of red flags. Greg let's explore that a little further, because Mueller didn't subpoena the president, and the written questions that Trump and his lawyers provided related only to the time before he became president. Add to that that bar and Mueller seemed to have a different idea of what constitutes obstruction of justice.

Could either of those factors have weighed into why Mueller didn't come to a conclusion about obstruction. They could, They certainly could, and we're just not going to to know the answers to these questions and tell Mr Barr and Mr Mueller explain themselves. And I suspect that that will probably happen in the form of a of a congressional

hearing at some point. I just don't think that the Congressional Democrats will rest until they have received a full and most likely public explanation of all of these decisions by those two. Now, everyone right now is saying we want everything to be released that can be released. It should all be out there, Republicans and Democrats. The President

has said it, and the Press secretary reiterated that. But when it comes down to it, we don't know who will object if they if the President does object on executive privileged grounds in any respect, Is that a hard battle for those who want the report to be revealed. Is that a hard battle for them or for the president? Well, I think it's it's tougher for the president. The you know, exact of privilege, like all privileges, is not absolute. It can be overcome upon the showing of a compelling need.

And I just think that the because of the importance of these issues and the high profile nature of them, there's really no way to avoid a full airing of the Special Counsel's work and his findings um indefinitely at some point, I think Congress, because most of the public demands to know the details, will demand a full airing, and that will likely include I think, hearings and a full explanation and look like with any other investigation, if

the investigator is confident I'm sure that Mr Mueller is, he will he should have no problem explaining his findings with respect to what he did and did not find, and that is likely to be the case sooner or rather than later. So you think that big reveal, if I can call it, that will happen before elections? Oh, I think so. I think this is going to come

to a head relatively quickly. I think, you know, everything in Washington is political, and everything that is political is subject negotiation, and so I just don't think it's tenable for the details of this investigation, you know, with the exception of certain classified information and potentially grant your information and information with respect to a still ongoing investigations the Gravernman, the basic details of what the Special Council found and

did not find will have to be aired publicly at some point. I also want to get your take on what standard did bar use in determining that there was no obstruction? Did he use a reasonable doubt standard? Did he use the standard that he doesn't think a president can be prosecuted? Can you tell from his letter? It would appear from the letter that the issue of whether or not as sitting president can be charged with federal crimes was not the determining factor, uh, which begs the

question what exactly was? And I just don't think we we can tell from the letter, and that that is at least one of the reasons why there will be a demand by at least half of the Congress for the Attorney General to testify and explain his decision making. That's simply not clear at this point. Let's turn out to the Southern District of New York and its investigation of Trump and his businesses, sometimes referred to as the

Sovereign District, and we're hearing that a lot lately. But how much is the Southern District and the prosecutors allowed to go out on their own in investigating and how

much in coming to conclusions of who to prosecute? Well, the Southern District Act of New York US Attorney's Office, just like every other one of the nine the other ninety two u Astorney's offices around the country, has quite a bit of leeway in determining its priorities and how to conduct its investigations, and whom to charge and whom

not to charge. There are certain d o J guidelines that govern every office, even the so called Software District of New York office, but those guidelines and rules apply to a very narrow set of types of cases and defendants. So for the most part, the Southern District is on its own to pursue the cases it wants to pursue

and charge of the defendants it wants to charge. It is, however, subject to some overall department policies, such as the prevailing opinion within d o J that a sitting sitting president can't be charged. That's not something that's simply applied to the mother investigation. That would also apply to the Southern District and every other U S Attorney's office. I would add, though, that that is simply a prevailing opinion within d o J,

not a policy, certainly not a statute. I have no doubt that that the Attorney General intends to follow that guidance and unless something unexpected would change, but that guidance would be binding on the Southern district. So what do you expect besides hearing more about the Millory Bart what do you expect to hear of the different investigations? Do you expect one to pop up and have more prominence than the others? Well, the the new one out there is,

of course, the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation. We we just uh saw a report of an indictment just a couple of weeks ago, so that one will will be interesting to watch, as well as the New York State Attorney general investigations on a range of conduct related to the

Trump organization. Uh. Those I think are the two key ones to watch because those investigations and those prosecutors are not in any way back owned by d o J policies or guidance, and so it's going to be interesting because it will be harder to predict exactly how they will turn out. Thank you so much, it's a pleasure. That's Gregg Browery is a former FBI Assistant director and former US attorney. Thanks so much, Greg for joining us,

Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Grosso. This is Bloomberg