POGO urges the inspector general to investigate whether DOJ lawyers lied to a judge to hide the role DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel played in Barr’s effort to mislead the public about Mueller’s report.
In a Thursday letter, a government watchdog group asked the DOJ’s independent inspector general to investigate whether department attorneys committed perjury or other crimes through a potentially improper attempt to keep the memo’s contents concealed amid a public records request.
“If it turns out that they committed crimes in the process of doing so, they will have magnified the harm to the department’s already damaged reputation and compounded the effect of Barr’s lies to the American people,” read the letter from the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to the DOJ inspector general.
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DOJ attorneys told a federal judge that the memo, prepared at Barr’s request by the agency s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), provided legal advice that guided Barr s decision not to charge former President Trump