So I had a carefully thought out diary draft where I was going to posit that Barr couldn’t release anything not publicly known about the Mueller report. Here is what I will be reading for when I scan the document.
Going beyond just how much wall-of-color there is, I’ll be looking for 3 things in the redactions themselves:
1) How much ‘structure’ is redacted? Do walls of color cover up paragraph transitions, lists, bullet points, etc? Do the redactions go from wall to wall like the document above or do they reveal at least section transitions?
2) How much ‘glue’ text is redacted? This includes headers, closing thoughts, and lead-in sentences. If a few paragraphs are blocked out, and the last couple lines of the paragraph leading in, that could be significant, because it means that Barr wants to conceal even the nature of the content below. Hit that crap with a FOIA lawsuit in a hurry. Force the DOJ to explain to a judge why some transitional comment ‘protects the privacy of peripheral third parties’
3) How many situations do we see lists or lines of discussion truncated? You know, like a list of prosecuted individuals with three redacted names on it (perhaps colored to suggest that there is an implication to an ongoing investigation).
Assuming the report itself has enough content to read I am interested myself in one main point:
1) What do we learn that we didn’t know yesterday? The media has revealed a lot of information about the corrupt dealings of the current administration, both before and after taking office. There are lawsuits, indictments, and plenty more. So I want to see what we learn that is not public record, and what is there that would likely not be public record after the current evidence is unsealed.
What I expect from Congress:
Every single sentence that Barr will be submitting is a factual statement to congress. I expect they will hold him to account on that. That means comparing the text of the report to testimony from people familiar with its contents (Mueller, etc), with documents available to the committee, and with information from sealed court content via amicus briefs.
A viable path to force the report into the hands of congress bit by bit is to make small, concrete demands of DOJ. For example, imagine if there is a wall of color blocking out pages of content. Either there are no paragraph breaks in those pages (unlikely) or Barr has made a claim that paragraph break white-space is ‘critical to protect the privacy of third parties’. Call him on that bullshit in court, and personally; because every single one of those paragraph breaks that is covered up is a lie to congress.