When Special Counsel Robert Mueller completes his Russia investigation, he is required to submit the findings first to the attorney general, and there is good reason to suspect the White House may try to prevent anyone else from seeing that report.
When a special counsel closes shop, he or she must give the attorney general a confidential report explaining the decision to bring charges or drop the matter. The attorney general would have to notify Congress of the conclusion, but can decide whether to make the special counsel's report public.
Currently, Matthew Whitaker, a Trump ally who has spoken out against the Mueller probe, holds the acting AG spot. The president's nominee to replace Whitaker on a permanent basis, William Barr, also has taken a public stance against the special counsel investigation.
This means the White House likely has an ally in the attorney general who could help him bury Mueller's findings, hiding them from Congress and the public.
Trump and his lawyers expect to get an advance look at the report if there’s a chance it will be shared beyond the Justice Department. They may assert executive privilege to withhold any information related to Trump’s time in the White House or during the transition, depending on what’s included.
“We will look at it and see if the president thinks there is a valid claim and if there is, do we want to make it,” said Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “We reserve the right. We don’t know if we have to, but we haven’t waived it.”
Giuliani said the White House would be willing to fight in court to preserve material it considers privileged.
Executive privilege is the long-disputed doctrine used by a number of presidents who have argued that they must be able to keep internal deliberations private to protect their ability to get candid advice from aides.
It’s an option that Trump’s team has intentionally kept open, the people familiar with White House deliberations said ...
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The White House could base an assertion of executive privilege on a 2008 opinion by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, under which information was withheld from Congress concerning the investigation into the leaking of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity. The White House also might try to cite former President Barack Obama’s use of the privilege to prevent the release of documents related to the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal, although a district judge rejected the argument.
Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, predicted any effort to suppress Mueller’s report “will not hold up in court.” He said a claim of “executive privilege can always be pierced by a specific and legitimate criminal or congressional inquiry.”
John Dean, who was White House counsel to President Richard Nixon -- and became a witness against him in the Watergate scandal -- said it would be an “absurd” legal strategy for the White House to claim executive privilege after having turned over material to Mueller.
Still, Dean said it could be a successful “stalling tactic” that could “tie it up in the lower courts for a couple of years.”
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It’s possible that Mueller has anticipated that White House lawyers will try to suppress his findings and has moved -- or will move in coming weeks -- to outflank their efforts, this official said. Mueller could do so by having a grand jury make a presentment, which is a public report without a criminal charge, the official said. Mueller also could seek to indict Trump, although the Justice Department has a standing policy that a president can’t be indicted while in office.
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Lawmakers, too, have options they could exercise. If Mueller’s findings aren’t made public, they could call him to testify before Congress, where he’d be pressed to disclose what he discovered.
“Trump can’t stop Mueller from going to Congress and talking about everything that’s in his report,” said Dean, the former Nixon counsel.
When Mueller Issues a Report, Trump May Try to Suppress Some of It (Bloomberg Politics)
The powers and limits of Robert Mueller's new job as special counsel (AP)