In a statement prepared for his hearing Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William Barr said his office “made every effort to ensure that the [Mueller Report] redactions were as limited as possible.” Barr, who released the statement late Tuesday, also noted the “redactions themselves were made by Department of Justice attorneys working closely with attorneys from the Special Counsel’s Office.” He added that he and outgoing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who resigned Monday, “did not overrule any of the redaction decisions, nor did we request that any additional material be redacted,” noting that the pair only selected the categories of the redactions and that “just 8 percent of the public report was redacted.” Barr also said President Trump “made the determination not to withhold any information based on executive privilege.” In the statement, Barr reiterated that “the special counsel did not find that any crimes were committed by the campaign or its affiliates” regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. “We concluded,” the statement continued, “that the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
