AP Photo/Evan Vucci
- Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said he supports releasing the special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report in the Russia investigation to the public with minimal redactions.
- "I hope very little of it is redacted," Cruz told reporters. "If a lot of it’s redacted, I’m sure that’ll be an issue, and there’ll be a lot of discussion about that, but I look forward to seeing what’s in it."
- Cruz is among just a handful of Republican lawmakers who support releasing the report with few redactions.
- The Justice Department is poised to release a redacted version of the report on Thursday.
- Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee lawyers and aides are reportedly planning on combing through the document and, depending on their findings, determining whether to subpoena the Justice Department for an un-redacted copy of the report.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said Wednesday he believes the special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report in the Russia investigation should be released with minimal redactions.
"I look forward to reading the report, seeing what’s in it," Cruz told reporters. "I hope — I think the entire report should be released, and so I’ve called for the public release early on. I hope very little of it is redacted. If a lot of it’s redacted, I’m sure that’ll be an issue, and there’ll be a lot of discussion about that, but I look forward to seeing what’s in it."
Cruz is among just a handful of Republican lawmakers who have called for the report’s public release with as few redactions as possible.
Earlier this year, GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley said he supported releasing the report.
"I don’t care what the report says," Grassley told the radio host Hugh Hewitt in February. "We paid $25 million, maybe $35 million to do it, and the public ought to know what their $25 or $35 million bought. And except for national security and privacy of individuals — those would be understandably redacted — everything else, I think, ought to be out."
In March, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress with his "principal conclusions" on the Mueller report. Barr wrote that Mueller’s team did not find sufficient evidence to bring a conspiracy charge against President Donald Trump or anyone on his campaign for coordinating with Russia during the 2016 election.
Barr also said Mueller’s team declined to make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment" on whether Trump obstructed justice and did not draw a conclusion one way or another. Instead, Mueller laid out all the evidence prosecutors had collected on both sides of the issue.
After reviewing the evidence, Barr said he consulted with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and other senior Justice Department officials, and he determined there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with an obstruction crime.
Barr’s decision sparked immediate calls from Democratic lawmakers for Barr to obtain permission from a judge to release the full, un-redacted Mueller report to Congress so they could determine whether the president had committed impeachable offenses, and whether those around him warranted more investigative scrutiny.
Read more: The Justice Department says the redacted Mueller report will be released Thursday
Barr, meanwhile, has resisted calls to release the report without any redactions, and the Justice Department said this week that it will release the redacted report on Thursday afternoon.
The Wall Street Journal reported that once they get a redacted version of the report, House Judiciary Committee lawyers and aides plan to comb through the document and determine whether there is a large gap between what they requested from the Justice Department and what the redacted copy of the report provides.
Based on their findings, The Journal reported, the committee will decide whether to subpoena the department for a full version of the report, as well as its underlying evidence.
See Also:
- A federal judge accused AG William Barr of sowing public distrust about ‘whether or not there is full transparency’ about the Mueller report
- Washington is bracing for the redacted Mueller report. Here’s everything we know about the 400-page document.
- Only 13% of Americans think Attorney General William Barr’s summary accurately described the Mueller Report
Source: Business Insider – ssheth@businessinsider.com (Sonam Sheth)