John,

Back in 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr cited a secret Department of Justice memo as key to his reasoning for not charging then-President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice at the end of the Mueller investigation.

We sued to make the memo public, and in 2021, a federal judge ruled in our favor, saying that the memo’s contents raise some serious questions, including whether Barr and the DOJ acted in bad faith in describing the memo to Congress and in court. The part of the memo that was released then made clear that the whole exercise was meant to give cover to Donald Trump, but it’s crucial to know the full content of the memo.

The DOJ appealed the decision, fighting to keep the memo secret.

And today, more than a year later, we won. The federal appeals court upheld the district judge’s decision, ruling that the DOJ waited too long to claim that the memo helped Barr decide whether to make a statement on the Mueller report, meaning that the deliberative process privilege did not apply.

We don’t have the memo yet. But we’re likely to soon, and when we do, we’ll publicly release it. It’s time for the public to finally see it, more than three years after we began fighting.

Thank you,


Noah Bookbinder
President, CREW

Sent via ActionNetwork.org. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, please click here.