I'm talking about people in private life, not public officeholders.” Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who asked, “Does that mean that you will redact information to protect the reputational interests of the president?īarr responded, “No. What does that mean for people like President Trump? Barr addressed this during his Senate testimony in a response a question from Sen. The fourth category, Barr testified, involves “information that implicates the privacy or reputational interests of peripheral players where there’s a decision not to charge them.” As Barr puts it in his letter, “the Special Counsel did spin off a number of cases that are still being pursued and we want to make sure that none of the information in the report would impinge upon either the ability of the prosecutors to prosecute the cases, or the fairness to the defendants.” Former Trump adviser Roger Stone, for example, was investigated by the special counsel and indicted in January, but his trial isn’t sent to begin until Nov. The third category involves ongoing prosecutions. ![]() These are the kinds of potentially sensitive matters Barr may seek to protect. Barr’s letter states that Mueller’s team sought evidence from 13 foreign governments. Such counter-intelligence investigations often rely on intercepts or information from foreign intelligence services. The second category described by Barr is “information that the IC, the intelligence community, believes would reveal intelligence sources and methods.” A large part of the special counsel investigation involves Russian interference in the 2016 election. While the shroud of grand jury secrecy has been lifted in some notable cases including Watergate and the investigation that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it appears that the disclosure of grand jury material from the Mueller probe is unlikely to occur anytime soon, if ever, unless Congress persuades a court to do so. Barr turned the tables, saying, “The chairman of the Judiciary Committee is free to go to court if he feels one of those exceptions is applicable.” Ed Case, D-Hawaii, asked Barr about whether he would ask the court to release grand jury material under one of those exceptions. ![]() That view was reinforced in an April 5 federal appeals court decision that outlined that “secrecy safeguards vital interests in (1) preserving the willingness and candor of witnesses called before the grand jury (2) not alerting the target of an investigation who might otherwise flee or interfere with the grand jury and (3) preserving the rights of a suspect who might later be exonerated.” Outside of some limited exceptions found in Rule 6, the appeals court found a lower court has no authority to disclose grand jury material.
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