The Justice Department instructed former special counsel Bob Mueller to limit his upcoming congressional testimony to the public findings of his 448-page report, according to Politico.
The DOJ has held several discussions with Mueller’s team since he agreed to testify before Congress, emphasizing that any evidence he gathered in his investigation is “presumptively privileged.”
A former US official told Politico that the DOJ is “taking the position that anything outside the written pages of the report are things about which presidential privilege hasn’t been waived.”
It’s unclear if the White House or Justice Department will have lawyers in the room to interject during Mueller’s testimony.
In a letter sent to Mueller on Monday, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer said that his testimony should “remain within the boundaries of your public report because matters within the scope of your investigation were covered by executive privilege.”
“These privileges would include discussion about investigative steps or decisions made during your investigation not otherwise described in the public version of your report,” the letter said.
Dems say Mueller doesn’t have to comply with DOJ:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler called the DOJ’s letter “incredibly arrogant” in an interview with CNN.
“I don't think it's much of an impediment, simply because Bob Mueller had indicated repeatedly that he was going to do exactly that,” Nadler said. “I think it's incredibly arrogant of the department to try to instruct him as to what to say. It's a part of the ongoing cover-up by the administration to keep information away from the American people, but I think that it's not going to have a real impact.”
“He doesn't work for them,” he added, “and that letter asks things that are beyond the power of the agency to ask even if he still worked for them.”
