Attorney General William Barr provided new information about the process of redacting special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and said he will likely release the highly anticipated report to the public “within a week.”
“This process is going along very well, and my original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands,” Barr told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, testifying before Congress for the first time since Mueller’s final report was submitted to him. “I think that from my standpoint, within a week I will be in a position to release the report to the public.”
Barr also told Congress more specific details about his coordination with the special counsel’s office and how the redacted material will appear in the public document.
In a letter to Congress on March 29 — which Barr revealed Tuesday that Mueller’s team had not reviewed before he sent it — the Attorney General said he was combing through the report to redact four categories of information: grand jury material, information that could compromise sensitive intelligence sources or methods, details related to ongoing investigations and “information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.”
Barr also said Tuesday that he’s working with Mueller’s office to identify the information in the report that falls within those four categories, but that when they release the redacted report, they will be clear about each type of redaction.
“We will color code the excisions from the report and we will provide explanatory notes describing the basis for each redaction,” Barr said. “So for example, if a redaction is made because of a court order and a pending prosecution, we will state that and we will distinguish between the various categories.”
Barr has said that the report contains information about some actions related to concerns over obstruction of justice that have not been publicly reported. When asked, Barr said those details would likely be in the public version of the report. “As things stand now, I don’t think that they will be redacted. So they will be identifiable,” Barr said.
As members of Congress continued to press Barr on questions about the report during an appropriations hearing about the Justice Department’s budget request, Barr noted that he will be in a position to answer more questions about the report in testimony before the House and Senate Judiciary committees after he releases the report in the coming days.
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