White House expects to see Mueller findings before they go to Congress
White House expects to see Mueller findings before they go to Congress
By Pamela Brown, Jeremy Diamond, Kevin Liptak and Sarah Westwood, CNN
Updated 7:59 PM ET, Mon March 18, 2019
Washington (CNN)
White House lawyers expect to have an opportunity to review whatever version of Robert Mueller's report Attorney General Bill Barr submits to Congress before it reaches lawmakers and the public, multiple sources familiar with the matter said, setting up a potential political battle over the hotly anticipated document.
The attorneys want the White House to have an opportunity to claim executive privilege over information drawn from documents and interviews with White House officials, the sources said.
The White House's review of executive privilege claims are within its legal purview, but could set up a political battle over the perception President Donald Trump is trying to shield certain information from the public about an investigation that has swirled around him since the first day of his presidency.
Justice Department lawyers could advise him against certain assertions if they don't feel it's legally defensible. If Trump does assert executive privilege, the decision could be litigated in court if it's challenged, which Democrats would almost certainly do.
"There's always tension between what looks best politically and what represents the interests of the institution -- the office of the presidency," one source close to the White House said. "Preserving executive privilege trumps political optics."
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While Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested privilege could be used to keep parts of the report from public view, the issue is up to the White House, not the President's personal attorneys.
The Justice Department and White House declined comment.
As the White House is bracing for Mueller's investigation to conclude, some officials describe a sense of anxiety at the contents of the report, even as they welcome the probe's end.
A person close to the President's legal team offered some caution in a sign of the level of anxiety about how closely held Mueller has kept his investigation.
"Let's get the airplane on the runway and see what we got," the source said.
But Trump, who spent part of this weekend lambasting Mueller on Twitter, does not plan to be blindsided by what the Justice Department possibly discloses to Congress and the public of the report. Instead, his lawyers expect the contents will be viewed first by them.
White Houses under Republican and Democratic presidents have asserted executive privilege to prevent certain information from being disclosed to Congress, and attorneys representing the White House and Trump have personally indicated they could assert that privilege over information that would be disclosed to Congress and the public.
During his confirmation hearing last year, Barr said while he did not "have a clue as to what would be in the report," he said "someone might raise a claim of executive privilege" if there is "material to which an executive privilege claim could be made."
Barr has wide discretion under existing regulations to decide what to share or not share with lawmakers -- but the issue could ultimately be subject to extended legal battles.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/polit...see/index.html
