When Mueller files, free the taxpayer-funded report
Previous prosecutors investigating presidential scandals have produced lengthy reports, sometimes crammed with more editorializing or salacious details than necessary.
But now, when Americans really do want to know exactly what happened in the 2016 election and the degree to which it was influenced by Russian interference, questions are arising about how much information will be made public.
The Trump administration has been openly speaking about keeping the report of special counsel Robert Mueller under wraps, releasing only a self-interested summary by Attorney General William Barr, a man who owes his job to President Donald Trump.
Barr, a Justice Department veteran, promised at his confirmation hearings to release as much information as possible — consistent with rules and regulations that give the attorney general wide discretion.
Any effort to sanitize the report that Mueller is said to be finalizing would be a massive political miscalculation and a national travesty.
OPPOSING VIEW: Full release isn’t in the public interest
The American people need to know the degree to which their democracy was compromised, and could be compromised again, by a foreign adversary. They also need to know why Russia's government would be so invested in Trump’s election as president and why Trump has been so solicitous of dictator Vladimir Putin.
Is Trump in debt to, or reliant on, Russian interests for his business? Does the Russian government have anything incriminating on him? And why have so many former Trump aides and associates lied under oath about their dealings with Russians?
The American people also deserve a full accounting of how Trump operatives did, or did not, share information designed to undermine the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
With the stakes so high, a summary would be insufficient. Nothing short of the full report — possibly with some redactions to protect legitimate national security concerns and grand jury testimony — is acceptable in this case.
The mere possibility that the Justice Department could sit on the report is highly problematic.
Many of Mueller’s predecessors operated under a post-Watergate law creating investigators, known formally as independent counsels, who had virtually unlimited autonomy.
When that law was allowed to lapse, it was thought that any administration would face too much political blowback to tamper with or quash a legitimate law enforcement investigation.
With Trump and his enablers shamelessly attacking Mueller’s probe as a “witch hunt,” that calculation needs to be revisited.
In the meantime, any effort to sugarcoat or suppress the special counsel's taxpayer-paid findings must not be allowed to stand.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: When Mueller files, free the taxpayer-funded report
