Judge cites William Barr’s ‘misleading’ statements in ordering review of Mueller report redactions

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in the District of Columbia sharply criticized Attorney General William Barr on Thursday for a “lack of candor,” questioning the truthfulness of the nation’s top law enforcement official in his handling of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller III.

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, overseeing a lawsuit brought by EPIC, a watchdog group, and BuzzFeed News, said he saw serious discrepancies between Barr's public statements last year about Mueller's findings and the public, partially redacted version of that report.

Because of those discrepancies, Walton ruled, the judge would review by himself an unredacted version of the Mueller report to see if the Justice Department's redactions were appropriate.

"In the Court's view, Attorney General Barr's representation that the Mueller Report would be 'subject only to those redactions required by law or by compelling law enforcement, national security, or personal privacy interests' cannot be credited without the Court's independent verification in light of Attorney General Barr's conduct and misleading public statements about the findings in the Mueller Report," Walton wrote.

Mueller's lengthy, two-part report detailed the findings of his investigation into whether anyone on the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, and whether President Donald Trump tried to obstruct that investigation.

A spokeswoman for Barr declined to comment on the judge's ruling.

Walton's decision is another indication of the growing concern among federal judges in Washington about politicization at the Justice Department.

Last month, another federal judge in the same courthouse, Amy Berman Jackson, sentenced President Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone to more than three years in prison, following an internal fight between Barr, his deputies, and career prosecutors over what sentence to recommend in that case.