Here's Why Nancy Pelosi Is Calling For "Transparency" With Regard To The Mueller Report
On Friday, March 22, Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally released his long-awaited findings on any alleged collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump administration in the 2016 presidential election. The report has yet to be released to the public and Congress, and Nancy Pelosi's statement about the Mueller Report calls for "transparency" going forward. Elite Daily reached out to the DOJ for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said to Elite Daily in a statement:
The next steps are up to Attorney General Barr, and we look forward to the process taking its course. The White House has not received or been briefed on the Special Counsel’s report.
Mueller concluded his long-running probe on the president on Friday afternoon, turning the findings in to Attorney General William Barr without recommending any new indictments. As of now, the public and Congress haven't seen what's in the report, although Barr said he'd potentially be making the "principal conclusions" public in the coming days.
In a letter to Congress, Barr wrote:
The Special Counsel has submitted to me today a 'confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions' he has reached. I am reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the Special Counsel's principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.
It's up to Barr's discretion to choose what he decides to share with the public and the president, and lawmakers are calling for continued transparency and openness moving forward as the public finally learns if Mueller was able to answer key inquiries about any possible Russian influence and if the president attempted to obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James Comey. Trump has long said that he's done nothing wrong with regard to the investigation, and he's repeatedly called the special counsel's investigation a "witch hunt."
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer released a joint statement on Friday, March 22, calling for the full report to be made public and advising against letting the president make any decisions about what findings would be omitted from the public's report.
"Now that Special Counsel Mueller has submitted his report to the Attorney General, it is imperative for Mr. Barr to make the full report public and provide its underlying documentation and findings to Congress," they wrote. "Attorney General Barr must not give President Trump, his lawyers or his staff any 'sneak preview' of Special Counsel Mueller’s findings or evidence, and the White House must not be allowed to interfere in decisions about what parts of those findings or evidence are made public."
They concluded:
The Special Counsel’s investigation focused on questions that go to the integrity of our democracy itself: whether foreign powers corruptly interfered in our elections, and whether unlawful means were used to hinder that investigation. The American people have a right to the truth. The watchword is transparency.
The DOJ did not respond to Elite Daily's inquiry regarding Pelosi's statement about the release of Mueller's report.
While a number of lawmakers have called for the full report to be made public — including the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler — Barr has said that he will be working with Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to determine what information will be released.
As of now, the White House claims that it hasn't seen the full report or learned of any of its findings. Per CBS, a White House spokesperson confirmed to the publication that President Trump is currently meeting with his lawyers Emmet Flood and Pat Cipollone at Mar-a-Lago.
There's no telling when or if Congress will be seeing the full report, but in the meantime, it sounds like the public can expect to learn the biggest findings from the nearly two-year-long probe as early as this weekend.
