There are still outstanding questions about how much of the Mueller report he’s actually willing to share.
The Senate just confirmed William Barr to be President Trump’s new attorney general, a vote that garnered some Democratic support in spite of broader party opposition and ongoing questions regarding his oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference.
Republicans broadly voted in favor of Barr. They were joined by Democrats Doug Jones (AL), Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), all of whom are from states where Trump remains popular.
This is Barr’s second turn as attorney general; he also served during the George H. W. Bush administration, and will again have jurisdiction over a wide-ranging set of issues from immigration enforcement to criminal justice reform to the Mueller investigation. The last of these has been one of the chief sticking points of his confirmation — especially because he has not committed to disclosing the Mueller report in full once it has been completed.
“The defining question for me was his declining to commit to release the Special Counsel’s report fully and completely,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement. “He chose not to make the commitment that he would release that report completely and directly to Congress and the American people.”
Democrats pressed Barr numerous times during his confirmation hearing on his reticence to share the entirety of the Mueller report with Congress. He repeatedly said he’d only release “as much information available as [he] can.” As Vox’s Andrew Prokop reported, he also did not agree to follow the guidance of ethics officials if they ask him to recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller investigation.
These responses, along with a memo that Barr sent the Justice Department questioning Mueller’s obstruction of justice case against the president, had many Democrats wondering if he was simply auditioning for the AG job, especially after Trump repeatedly slammed Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Russian investigation. In the assurances he did offer, however, Barr said he would enable the Mueller investigation to go on unimpeded and emphasized that it was strongly unlikely that he would fire Mueller.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is rumored to be stepping down after Barr’s confirmation, has also said he was confident in Barr’s ability to oversee the probe, and that Barr did not at the time of writing the memo have “the actual facts of the case.
