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Justice Department tells court 'Alternative Mueller Report' found and may soon be released
The so-called "Alternative Mueller Report” mentioned in a book by Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation, has been found, according to the Department of Justice.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York said in a Thursday evening filing in federal court that the Justice Department “has located and begun processing this record and intends to release all non-exempt portions … once processing is complete.”
The Justice Department was responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the New York Times in July seeking access to a report allegedly compiled by Weissmann, who publicly battled with Mueller after the special counsel's report “did not establish” any conspiracy or coordination between members of former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the Kremlin.
Weissmann claimed in his book Where the Law Ends that the Mueller investigation had faced restrictions that limited the final report that was released.
“Only some of these limitations made it into the final report, as Team M [Manafort] and Team R [Russia] did not have the pen — that is, the final say. To remedy this, at least for posterity, I had all the members of Team M write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation, and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files," he wrote in the book published in the fall of 2020.
The New York Times referenced that passage, telling the court this summer that it “sought a copy of the internal report done by Mr. Weissman’s team [the ‘Alternative Mueller Report’] referenced in Weissman’s book” and called it “a document of immense public interest” in claiming that “Weissman’s acknowledgment of the existence of the Alternative Mueller Report suggests that there was important facts or findings omitted from the original version.”
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York said in a Thursday evening filing in federal court that the Justice Department “has located and begun processing this record and intends to release all non-exempt portions … once processing is complete.”
The Justice Department was responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the New York Times in July seeking access to a report allegedly compiled by Weissmann, who publicly battled with Mueller after the special counsel's report “did not establish” any conspiracy or coordination between members of former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the Kremlin.
Weissmann claimed in his book Where the Law Ends that the Mueller investigation had faced restrictions that limited the final report that was released.
“Only some of these limitations made it into the final report, as Team M [Manafort] and Team R [Russia] did not have the pen — that is, the final say. To remedy this, at least for posterity, I had all the members of Team M write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation, and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files," he wrote in the book published in the fall of 2020.
The New York Times referenced that passage, telling the court this summer that it “sought a copy of the internal report done by Mr. Weissman’s team [the ‘Alternative Mueller Report’] referenced in Weissman’s book” and called it “a document of immense public interest” in claiming that “Weissman’s acknowledgment of the existence of the Alternative Mueller Report suggests that there was important facts or findings omitted from the original version.”
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