Can the Mueller report be released to the public in its entirety?
Former deputy independent counsel Sol Wisenberg says there are certain parts of the Mueller report that cannot be made public without a court order.
President Trump is right: Every American should be able to see what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team have been doing for the last two years. The Mueller report should be made public.
As the president said Wednesday: "Let it come out. Let people see it.”
For two years, virtually every news organization – and every left-wing political organization – has been opining, speculating and fantasizing over what dirt Mueller’s team of anti-Trump lawyers could dig up on the president and his associates. Again and again, they have used the investigation as a cudgel to attack the Trump administration and rally the so-called “resistance.”
COMEY HOPES MUELLER REPORT SHOWS RULE OF LAW, DOESN'T THINK TRUMP SHOULD BE IMPEACHED
However, with each new indictment and each new case that Mueller has handed off to various district courts, it’s become increasingly apparent that the special counsel’s office has simply been using the power of the Justice Department to conduct an inquisition on anyone in Trump’s orbit – and do whatever was necessary to gain their cooperation or put them in jail.
The American people should be able to see how far Mueller and his team have been willing to levy the power of the government to torment people and extract cooperation from them – in a political investigation.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who worked briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, was interviewed by Mueller’s team for hours. They kept him talking until they could find any inconsistencies, and then they charged him with lying to federal investigators. Then they threatened to go after his son if he didn’t sign a plea deal.
Former Trump presidential Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort’s house was raided. He was kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. The ultimate charges against him had nothing to do with his work on the Trump campaign. They were all process crimes and financial crimes related to Manafort’s previous business dealings.
And it seems that Mueller just kept former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen cycling through lies until Mueller found the ones he liked.
Many have commented that Mueller is treating this investigation in the same way he went about taking down the Gambino crime family. Let that sink in. The special counsel’s office is treating the duly elected president of the United States and his associates as though they were a murderous organized crime family.
This is why the Mueller report should be made public. The American people should be able to see how far Mueller and his team have been willing to levy the power of the government to torment people and extract cooperation from them – in a political investigation.
I realize that making Mueller’s report public would be a historic move on the part of Attorney General William Barr. Even the Watergate report by Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski was not made public until 2018. But Mueller’s investigation has been a historic effort by the left and the Washington establishment to unseat a sitting president.
Of course, classified information and information that would endanger national security or human life should be excluded from a report released to the public. Also, the names of regular people who have been unwillingly pulled into this hunting party should be left out.
But the American people should see – in detail – all the lengths to which Mueller’s team went to get what they wanted. All the arm-twisting, threats, promises and punishments – everything.
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I have no doubt that the Democrats are going to cherry pick pieces of the report to serve their own purposes – and the media will gleefully amplify and echo them.
However, the American people have the right to see the investigation in full and decide for themselves whether this has been a legitimate investigation – or an inquisition carried out by bureaucrats who didn’t like the choice Americans made in 2016.
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