Victoria Toensing: Why Mueller's report (no matter how much Dems clamor for it) must be kept confidential
Fox News and other news organizations report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is close to completing his nearly two-year investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. When Mueller finishes his probe, he is required to provide Attorney General William Barr with a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”
The now-extinct Independent Counsel Law required that a final report discussing the investigation be sent to Congress. When Congress allowed the law to expire and did not replace it, the Justice Department under President Clinton created the special counsel under its own regulations.
Those regulations corrected one of the key problems with the old law: specifying the branch of government that controls the investigation. The regulations make clear the position is under the executive branch. Mueller reports directly to the attorney general.
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The regulations also changed the nature of any report by the special counsel. They state that the attorney general may release the report if he or she determines doing so is “in the public interest.” However, such release must “comply with applicable legal restrictions.”
Political outcries for the entire report to be made public ignore these restrictions and the harm such publicity does to the innocent.
In addition to a prohibition on the release of classified material, two legal restrictions apply: executive privilege and grand jury secrecy. During Mueller’s probe, the White House had no need to assert executive privilege, which is the president’s power to withhold certain deliberative and presidential communications from Congress, the courts and the public.
FULL article: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victoria-toensing-why-muellers-report-no-matter-how-much-dems-clamor-for-it-must-be-kept-confidential