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By Frank Thorp V and Dareh Gregorian
A hard-copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report will be made available to members of Congress after 11 a.m. Thursday, but only after a news conference by the attorney general — timing that has infuriated Democratic lawmakers.
That means the document will be handed over to lawmakers on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees 90 minutes after the press conference by Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the contents of the 300-plus page report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign.
The report will be delivered on CDs. Sometime after that, it will be posted on the special counsel’s website and available to the public, a Department of Justice official said.
Democrats blasted the timing as political, with House Judiciary chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., calling the timing troubling and saying, “This is wrong.”
Nadler at a news conference Wednesday night accused Barr of waging a media campaign on behalf of the president.
Barr “cherry picked” Mueller’s report in his summary to Congress and briefed the White House before providing a copy of the report to legislators in order to help the administration prepare a rebuttal, Nadler said.
“The central concern here is that Attorney General Barr is not letting the facts of the report speak for themselves, but is trying to bake in the narrative about the report to the benefit of the White House,” he told reporters.
Nadler then slammed Barr for choosing to release the report on a holiday weekend and making it difficult for Congress to respond.
The Judiciary chairman also said lawmakers would issue subpoenas if they found the report to be heavily redacted, asserting that the committee should have access to the full report. Nadler said that if that were to happen, Mueller and his team could be among those subpoenaed.
“I assume we’ll probably find it useful to ask Mueller to testify, and I assume we’ll ask members of his team to testify,” he said. “But we’ll have to make those decisions after we read what we get, as inadequate as that may be.”
A Democratic Senate aide told NBC News, “Here’s the question — why are they trying so hard to control the narrative? What are they trying to hide?”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted, “Mr. Barr is acting more like a Trump campaign spokesman than an independent agent of the law.” “The American people deserve the truth. They don’t need any more pre-damage control or spin,” Schumer wrote.
President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly blasted the probe as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax,” had some warm words for Barr in a radio interview Wednesday, calling him “fantastic.” “You’ll see a lot of very strong things come out tomorrow,” Trump said in an interview with the “Larry O’Connor Show” on WMAL.
Democrats have demanded to see an unredacted version of the report as well. The Justice Department told the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday they won’t even start to have a discussion about that until Friday, the Senate aide said.
Mueller will not be attending the Barr-Rosenstein press conference.
Doha Madani contributed.