'No Amount of Apologizing': Judge Scolds DOJ, but Pauses Release of Trump Prosecution Memo

“The department chose not to tell the court the purpose of the memorandum or subject it addressed at all, and no amount of apologizing for ‘imprecision’ in the language it did use can cure the impact of that fundamental omission,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote.

By Jacqueline Thomsen, Nat’l Law J., June 14, 2021

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., said Monday that she will pause the release of a legal memo about the Mueller report, but continued to take issue with some of the arguments the Justice Department has made in the case.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia last month ordered that an Office of Legal Counsel memo on a potential prosecution of then-President Donald Trump based on Special Counsel Robert Mueller III’s findings be made public, citing discrepancies between DOJ officials’ descriptions of the memo and the memo itself, which she reviewed in private.

The Justice Department said it will appeal part of the ruling and asked Jackson to stay her order while it takes the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. On Monday, Jackson granted that motion, finding “the public interest in disclosure now does not outweigh DOJ’s interest in preserving a privilege that would be lost if the Court were to order disclosure.”

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