A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release a March 2019 legal memo clearing former President Trump of potential obstruction of justice charges in the wake of the Mueller investigation, with the judge accusing former Attorney General William Barr and agency lawyers of deceiving the public.
District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Monday
ordered the DOJ to release the legal memo within two weeks in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).
The DOJ had argued in court that the full memo — portions of which have already been released — should be withheld because
it falls under exceptions to the public records law for attorney-client privilege and deliberative government decisionmaking.
But Jackson said on Monday that
those claims were not consistent with her own review of the unredacted memo or the timeline revealed by internal emails among top Justice Department officials.
Jackson, who was appointed to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., by former President Obama, wrote in a
scathing 41-page decision that "
not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege."
"The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time," she added.
CREW filed its lawsuit in May 2019 seeking internal DOJ documents regarding Barr's public statements around the release of the Mueller report. During the Trump administration, the Justice Department fought back vigorously against the lawsuit, but it's unclear how the agency intends to handle the case in the wake of the decision, which can be appealed.