Attorney General William Barr is already a couple of days past the deadline to turnover the full, unredacted version of the special counsel report to the House Judiciary Committee. But in a last ditch effort to avoid seeing Barr served with a contempt of congress charge, the Department of Justice met with House lawmakers to offer a compromise. Rather than hand over the report to the committee they would … not do that.
According to Politico, the compromise involves the less-redacted version of the report that has been held behind closed doors at the Senate for the brief, note-free peepage of only the top two people on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees along with the leadership of the two chambers. Since none of the above includes anyone with an eidetic memory capable of holding 450 pages, this has not been particularly satisfactory. Plus this report is still redacted, and there’s nothing more than whatever faith people may place in Barr about what’s below the ink.
The compromise suggested by the DOJ is that Congress get … slightly more people, plus a couple of staffers, to look at the exact same still-redacted report. But now with notes!
The report indicates that it was “not immediately clear” if this was enough to convince House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler to scrap the contempt vote for Barr. How about “No?” No is a better answer.