Department of Justice (DOJ)
355 Articles

What Congress Should Ask Bill Barr When He Testifies
Think we are missing some crucial questions? Send us a note (lte@justsecurity.org) and we can add your question to the list with attribution.

A Brief Aside on the Inexplicable May 2017 Rosenstein Memo About Comey
This is hardly the most important thing about the Mueller Report, but it warrants a short note, if only to fill out the historical record. When President Trump removed FBI Director…

Barr’s Redaction Process, cont’d
Attorney General William Barr testified at length last week, in the House and the Senate, about his ongoing process of redacting the Mueller Report in anticipation of sharing it…

Barr’s Playbook: He Misled Congress When Omitting Parts of Justice Dep’t Memo in 1989
When Bill Barr was head of Office of Legal Counsel, he gave Congress the legal conclusions and reasoning of an important Justice Department memo but left out major portions of…

Barr the Redactor?
[April 7 UPDATES noted.] In his March 29 letter, Attorney General William Barr informed the Chairs of the congressional Judiciary Committees that the report Special Counsel Robert…

Mueller’s Findings: Why DOJ Non-Disclosure Policy and Grand Jury Secrecy May Not Apply
As the Watergate scandal deepened in November 1973, President Richard Nixon declared: “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.” Nixon was right.…

Decoding What Barr Really Said About Letting the Public See the Mueller Report
"Barr didn’t answer the key question of whether he’d make Mueller’s final report public—or, if he did, his answer missed the mark."

What to Watch for in Bill Barr’s Confirmation Hearing
Just Security asked experts what to watch for in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for William Barr, President Trump’s nominee to replace Jeff Sessions…

Attorney General Nominee Barr on Transparency: A Direct Answer? Or Misdirection?
In his written opening statement for his confirmation hearing as attorney general, William Barr says his goal is "to provide as much transparency as I can consistent with the law."…

What’s Noticeably Missing from the Whitaker Nonrecusal Explanation
The Department of Justice issued a letter yesterday explaining why Matthew Whitaker has decided he won’t recuse from superintending the Russia Investigation overseen by Special…

Why New Laws Aren’t Needed to Take Domestic Terrorism More Seriously
Congress has given DOJ officials plenty of tools to attack far-right violence. They just require the will to use them.

Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether It’d Be Constitutional to Indict Trump
Lederman writes that so much of the public discussion is a distraction from Mueller's greatest value: determining if President Trump is compromised by Moscow, thus preventing the…