No, Donald Trump and William Barr can’t prevent Robert Mueller’s report from becoming public
During his disastrous Senate confirmation hearings today, Donald Trump’s Attorney General nominee William Barr strongly implied that he’ll take Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, edit it to Trump’s liking, and then publish it as an “AG report.” This is about as corrupt as you can get, and it would in fact be felony obstruction of justice on Barr’s part. It’s also not something that can possibly work.
Various House Democrats have already said that if Robert Mueller’s report isn’t made public, they’ll simply subpoena him to testify, and then they’ll essentially have him read his report into the record. This can all be done in front of live television cameras, with the exception of any classified aspects, so it could end up being even more devastating to Trump if Barr does try to suppress Mueller’s report.
It looks like the big legal battle here will center around any attempt by Barr to release an edited and essentially falsified version of Mueller’s report before the House Democrats can bring Mueller in to reveal the real report. At that point it would become a propaganda war. Knowledgeable people would believe Mueller’s report; Trump’s deranged base would choose to believe Barr’s report; the people in the middle would be up for grabs.
So if the Republicans go ahead and confirm William Barr, the Democrats will have a clear task ahead of them: intervene legally now to try to prevent Barr from releasing an altered version of Robert Mueller’s report. This was all going to end up in front of the Supreme Court anyway, so the Democrats might as well try to take it there now. But no, Barr cannot magically prevent Mueller’s authentic report from seeing the light of day; that part isn’t remotely difficult to work around.
