The 1989 precedent that raises questions about how Barr will redact the Mueller report
Asked if he felt Barr was acting in good faith in 1989, Goodman hesitated.
“I think it’s difficult to imagine that Barr didn’t know what he was doing in failing to inform the Congress that he had concluded that the president of the United States could violate the U.N. Charter,” he said. “In fact, that proposition has proved to be highly controversial ever since the OLC opinion was publicly released and significant executive branch practice turns on that proposition.”
He later added that the OLC opinion has come to be seen as “a notorious opinion or a infamous, highly controversial opinion.”
There was one specific reason to think that Barr might be more willing to hew to a narrow set of redactions this time, Goodman said: a muscular Congress.
“In 1989, the Congress appeared somewhat shy to actually subpoena the full opinion,” he said, noting that it took nearly two years for them to do so, by which point Barr had left his position at the OLC. “Here you have the House Judiciary Committee already authorizing to subpoena the full Mueller report. That may change Barr’s calculation because he might think, this time around, the full document will be revealed at the same period of time that he’s still in office.”