
Justice Department releases unredacted Barr memo detailing decision not to charge Trump with obstructing Russia probe
CNN
Former Attorney General Bill Barr concluded that then-President Donald Trump couldn't be charged with obstructing the Russia probe because there wasn't an underlying conspiracy between his campaign and Russia, breaking with special counsel Robert Mueller's view on the matter, according to a newly unredacted memo released by the Justice Department.
The nine-page memo was released Wednesday as part of a lawsuit over public records tied to the Mueller investigation. A highly redacted version of the memo was previously released in 2021, but a federal court ordered the Justice Department to make the full document public.
"It would be rare for federal prosecutors to bring an obstruction prosecution that did not itself arise out of a proceeding related to a separate crime," then-top Justice Department officials Steven Engel and Ed O'Callaghan wrote in the document, which concludes with a formal recommendation against charging Trump, which Barr signed and approved on March 24, 2019.

A senior Justice Department official has told Congress that the Trump administration can continue lethal military strikes on alleged drug traffickers without congressional approval and that the administration is not bound by a decades-old war powers law, two congressional sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The US military has killed 64 people in 15 strikes that have destroyed 16 boats as part of a campaign that Washington says is aimed at curtailing the flow of drugs into the United States. There have been three survivors of those strikes, two of whom were briefly detained by the US Navy before being returned to their home countries.































