On Thursday, two anti-Trump lawmakers rallied outside of the White House to demand the Department of Justice to release the unredacted version of the Mueller report, claiming that it would tell the truth about whether or not President Donald Trump has “abused his office.”
The protest, which was started by certain leftist groups like moveon.org, the Women’s March, Public Citizen, the Center for American Progress, and People for the American Way, brought in several hundreds of people, who were carrying “release the report” and other anti-Trump signs.
Despite the fact that Attorney General William Barr reported that Mueller and his team found no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who is a part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the crowd of protesters that President Trump may still be found guilty of several different charges.
According to Blumenthal, “All across the country America is rising up.” He continued by saying that Attorney General Barr’s report “doesn’t exonerate the president.”
He also stated that “There is evidence of obstruction. That there may well be evidence of collusion with Russia, even if it isn’t beyond a reasonable doubt. All of America knows we deserve the Mueller report,” said Blumenthal.
Nadler, Blumenthal, and several other speakers repeatedly commented that Trump “handpicked” and “appointed” Barr, even though it was up to the Senate to approve him for the position of Attorney General. Nadler made the implication that he believes Trump is a threat to the security of the United States.
“You know that we’ are in a battle over the rules that govern our democracy and over the rules that guarantee that we will remain a democracy. We cannot allow a president to carry on sustained attacks on the integrity of our republic and the integrity of our democracy,” said Nadler.
He said that it’s necessary for them to see the “full Mueller report and the underlying evidence because it is our job, not the Attorney General’s, not a political appointee of the president’s, to determine whether or not the president has abused his office and needs to be held accountable.”
Nadler also explained that Congress is responsible for determining whether or not the president took part in “official misconduct,” not the Attorney General. “This is a matter of law and it is a matter of justice. We need a full accounting of the president’s actions,” said Nadler.
Even though it took two whole years for Mueller and his team to complete the report, the Democrats are demanding that the unredacted report gets released to Congress and the public as soon as possible. He also rejected the idea that the report should be redacted when it’s released to the public to protect national security.
