The Deep State DOJ Just Can’t Get Past The Mueller Investigation

NTD News reports: 

The Justice Department told a federal court on Monday that it intends to partially appeal a ruling requiring the release of a legal memorandum prepared by the Trump-era Justice Department for then-Attorney General William Barr to assist in his decision on whether to prosecute then-President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice during the Mueller special counsel investigation.

DOJ attorneys on late Monday filed a “Notice of Appeal” and a request to partially stay the court order while the case plays out. In their request, the attorneys said they were willing to release the entirety of the first page and a section of the March 24, 2019, internal memo but asked for the other redacted portions to remain hidden from the public.

The attorneys explained (pdf) that the department may have “incorrectly described the nature of the decisional process” that Barr was engaged in when he referred to the memo in their filings, adding that it was the imprecision in its description of the decisional process is what led to the court to determine that the memo should not be protected by the deliberative process privilege.

The department withheld the March 24, 2019, memo, claiming that it should be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act because it contained the private advice of lawyers and was produced prior to any decisions that were made.

NPR wrote: 

In a court ruling earlier this month, the judge added that the previous DOJ management team may have misled her about exactly when former Attorney General William Barr had decided not to charge Trump. The judge gave the new leaders at the Justice Department two weeks to decide whether to appeal. DOJ asked for, and received, another week to make up its mind.

In the end, Justice Department lawyers told the judge they would appeal and seek to block the publication of the full memo. The new DOJ brief said fuzzy wording in its own prior legal filings led Judge Jackson to draw inaccurate conclusions about how Barr came to decide not to charge Trump.

Government lawyers argued the bulk of the memo should be shielded from the public under the theory that it protects deliberations by the Justice Department about whether facts in the Mueller probe met the high bar for a legal violation by Trump.

As for the judge's concern that DOJ misled her, the new document said it came down to a misunderstanding. In fact, it said, the memo put in writing advice former Attorney General Barr had received, but that the document itself wasn't finalized until about two hours before Barr notified Congress.