Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be released to the public “by mid-April, if not sooner,” Attorney General William Barr confirmed on Friday.
“Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own,” Barr wrote in a letter to congressional leaders on Friday. “I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report or to release it in serial or piecemeal fashion.”
Under the current plans, Barr said, the White House will not get to review the report prior to its release. The report details Mueller’s investigation into whether Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election and if Trump obstructed justice by attempting to halt the investigation.
Barr said that Mueller and his team are assisting the Justice Department with putting together a summary, with “the redactions that are required” to avoid revealing, among other things, sensitive sources or methods for obtaining those sources.
Barr pushed back against the idea that his previous letter, submitted to Congress on Sunday, was a summary of the report. Instead, he wrote, it was meant to be “a summary of its ‘principal conclusions’ — that is, its bottom line” on the questions of collusion and obstruction of justice. That previous letter suggested Mueller didn’t establish collusion and punted on obstruction of justice.
Barr also noted that the full Mueller report is nearly 400 pages long, excluding tables and appendices. So there will be a lot to dig through that wasn’t included in Barr’s previous four-page letter.