The brutal opinion concludes that the attorney general skewed perceptions of the Trump-Russia review.
Politico said:A federal judge excoriated Attorney General Bill Barr on Thursday for distorting the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller during his investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In a stinging 23-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said Barr’s efforts to spin the report before its public release last year raised serious doubts about whether the Justice Department faithfully applied the law when deleting certain information from the publicly disclosed version.
“The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report,” wrote Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
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“The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency,” the judge said at the time.
Walton also repeatedly teed off on the department for being slow to decide whether to drop its effort to pursue criminal charges against McCabe over statements he made to investigators.
Prosecutors finally notified McCabe’s lawyers last month that no charges were being brought. The formal word came on the same day as a deadline that Walton had set for the release of previously secret court records about the issue.
Transcripts made public that day showed that at an earlier, closed-door hearing the judge used extraordinarly sharp language as he slammed the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation of McCabe, who has been a frequent target of attacks from Trump.
“The public is listening to what’s going on, and I don’t think people like the fact that you got somebody at the top basically trying to dictate whether somebody should be prosecuted,” Walton said. “I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road.”