Barr sends letter to Capitol Hill on Mueller report

Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees on Sunday briefing them of the “principal conclusions” in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. "DOJ has just sent us a very brief letter about the Mueller report, which we will share shortly," House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said in a tweet. DOJ has just sent us a very brief letter about the Mueller report, which we will share shortly.

Mueller delivered his confidential report to Barr on Friday afternoon, concluding his nearly two-year investigation into President Trump and Russia’s efforts to elect him. Barr spent the weekend at the Justice Department with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation, analyzing the report and determining how much of it Congress and the American public will get to see. The attorney general has said he wants to be transparent, though how much of the report will be released depends on the law. Justice Department guidelines recommend against releasing negative information on people who have not been indicted.

A contentious battle is expected over the report as top Democrats demand the full release of Mueller's report, while some Republicans want to take transparency a step further, including the release of the scope memo for the Russia investigation and related documents. Earlier this month, the House voted 420-0 to pass a resolution calling for the release of Mueller's final report to the public, with four Republicans voting "present." The president could also try and assert executive privilege in order to stop the Justice Department from releasing evidence in the investigation, though Trump has so far said he’s fine with the report being released.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/barr-sends-letter-to-capitol-hill-on-mueller-report

Harry Reid rips James Comey for doing 'nothing' about Russian election meddling

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid condemned former FBI Director James Comey in a weekend interview, saying he didn’t do enough to curtail Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, told radio host John Catsimatidis of 970 AM in New York that he sent a letter to Comey before the election urging him to look into Russia and reports that it was meddling in the election. “I wrote a letter in August [2016] to the Director of the FBI Comey and said Russia is messing with our elections and you need to do something about that. And by October he had done nothing,” Reid said. “We now know he should have done something."

Reid said Comey didn’t get involved because he thought President Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was going to win. Reid has been a sharp critic of Comey since before the 2016 election and blamed the former FBI director for Clinton’s defeat. Comey was fired by Trump in 2017. “Now the hindsight from his troops are that he didn’t do it because he thought Hillary would win the election. He therefore thought it would be too political for him to get involved,” Reid said.

Special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report on election meddling to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. Mueller was appointed within days of Comey’s firing, and Comey later told Congress he leaked memos between he and Trump to try to spur the creation a special counsel investigation. During the interview, Reid warned that Russia will likely try to influence elections in the future, noting that the country is led by President Vladimir Putin, a former agent of the KGB. “They’ve done it in the past. They are doing it as we speak in European countries. And they’re going to do it again in America,” Reid said. Reid, 79, served in the Senate for 30 years, including as majority leader from 2007 to 2015. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/harry-reid-rips-james-comey-for-doing-nothing-about-russian-election-meddling