Democrats are in an uproar after the White House and Department of Justice officials appear to be coordinating ahead of the release of the special counsel’s report. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images congress ‘Keep your mouth shut’: Dems erupt over Barr’s Mueller report rollout Lawmakers are accusing the attorney general of trying to spin Mueller’s findings.

House Democrats exploded in anger Wednesday over Attorney General William Barr’s plans to roll out special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, accusing the Justice Department of trying to spin the report’s contents and protect President Donald Trump.

Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will hold a news conference at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning to review the report, which will include redactions. Reports that DOJ officials have already discussed Mueller’s findings with the White House only further inflamed tensions.


Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Barr had “thrown out his credibility & the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect @realDonaldTrump above all else.“

“The American people deserve the truth, not a sanitized version of the Mueller Report approved by the Trump Admin,“ Pelosi wrote on Twitter while on an official trip in Ireland.

The House speaker joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to call for Mueller to testify publicly once the report is out, saying Barr's "regrettably partisan handling of the Mueller report ... and his indefensible plan to spin the report in a press conference" had created "a crisis of confidence in his independence and impartiality."

"We believe the only way to begin restoring public trust in the handling of the Special Counsel’s investigation is for Special Counsel Mueller himself to provide public testimony in the House and Senate as soon as possible," they said.

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Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee hastily convened a news conference for Wednesday night in Chairman Jerry Nadler‘s district in New York City to issue similar broadsides against Barr.

“I’m deeply troubled by reports that the WH is being briefed on the Mueller report AHEAD of its release,” Nadler tweeted before the press conference. The New York Democrat added that DOJ informed him that Congress would not receive the report until around 11 a.m. or 12 p.m. Thursday. “This is wrong,” Nadler added.

At the news conference, Nadler said that Barr “appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump, the very subject of the investigation at the heart of the Mueller report.“

Nadler also reiterated that he was likely to ask Mueller to testify, and added that it might also be “useful“ to ask members of Mueller's team to testify. The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee made a bipartisan request last month for Mueller and his team to brief them on their findings as well.

Republicans said little about the drama unfolding late Wednesday, but Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top GOP lawmaker on the Judiciary Committee, chided Nadler for his attack on Barr.

“The only person trying to spin the report is @RepJerryNadler,“ Collins tweeted. “The AG has done nothing unilaterally. After partnering with DAG Rosenstein to share principal conclusions, Barr is releasing the report voluntarily, working with Mueller’s team step by step.“

A Senate aide confirmed that lawmakers didn’t expect to receive Mueller's report until 11 a.m. on Thursday — after Barr and Rosenstein‘s news conference — and that a discussion about providing a less-redacted version to Congress wouldn’t begin until Friday. DOJ officials indicated that Congress would receive the redacted report on CDs, and it was unclear when reporters would receive it or when it would be posted online for the general public.

Mueller‘s probe focused on Russia‘s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election and whether any associates of Trump aided the scheme. He also investigated whether Trump himself tried to obstruct the investigation, an area that the Judiciary Committee has begun looking into as well.

Neither Mueller nor anyone else from the special counsel’s prosecution team will be in attendance at the Barr news conference, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told POLITICO. Carr declined to say whether Mueller had been invited to attend.

Carr, however, said he will be at the news conference in his capacity as a member of the DOJ public affairs office, which he recently returned to as the Mueller probe concluded to handle criminal cases.

Democrats also were incensed that Trump, in a radio interview, revealed Barr’s press event minutes before the Justice Department officially announced it — another suggestion that the White House and Justice Department were coordinating ahead of the report’s public release.

A DOJ spokeswoman later said the news conference was not Trump’s idea. Trump said in the same interview that he might hold his own press event afterward.

“I can’t imagine DOJ didn’t brief the White House" about the news conference, said a source familiar with the president’s legal strategy.

“Pretty convenient of the attorney general to take questions on the report before anyone has a chance to read the report,” Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a Judiciary Committee member, wrote on Twitter.

The uproar came as The New York Times reported that DOJ officials have had “numerous conversations” with White House lawyers about Mueller’s conclusions, though the report was vague about how much the Justice Department had told the White House beyond the top-line conclusions Barr released more than three weeks ago.

Barr has already been under fire from Democrats for his handling of the Mueller investigation. In his four-page summary of the report’s primary conclusions, the attorney general said Mueller uncovered evidence that Trump obstructed justice, but Barr decided against charging Trump with a crime.

In two Capitol Hill hearings last week, Barr did not answer questions about the Justice Department’s coordination or contact with the White House.

“So-called Attorney General is presiding over a dog and pony show,” tweeted House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries. “Here is a thought. Release the Mueller report tomorrow morning and keep your mouth shut. You have ZERO credibility.”

Democrats’ complaints arrived just as the Justice Department confirmed plans to allow “a limited number of members of Congress and their staff” to view a version of the Mueller report “without certain redactions.”

But rather than give these lawmakers a copy, DOJ officials said in a court filing they would “secure this version of the report in an appropriate setting” only available to these few lawmakers and aides.

Barr has indicated he intends to redact four categories of information from the report: grand jury evidence, classified information, evidence related to ongoing investigations and information that could be embarrassing to "peripheral third parties." Lawmakers have argued they should see the entire report and that Republicans received access to nearly all of those categories of information in their own efforts to probe the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Justice Department officials also indicated that if Congress seeks its own version of the less-redacted report, they’ll lean on federal District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson — who is presiding over the pending trial of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone — to determine what to do next.

In a court filing in Stone’s case, prosecutors said they would seek her guidance should Congress ask for the report, and they sense a “reasonable likelihood” that its contents will become public.

Nadler is expected to issue a subpoena as soon as Friday or Monday for the full report and all of its underlying evidence and grand jury information.

Darren Samuelsohn, Josh Gerstein and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.