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Saturday, September 15, 2018 12:04:29 AM
The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the Coming Mueller Report
"The Manafort Guilty Plea, the Mueller Investigation, and the President"
By Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, Benjamin Wittes
Friday, September 14, 2018, 12:21 PM
(Photo: Wikimedia/National Record and Archives Administration)
According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and publicly available. The other is a document most people have never heard of: the “Road Map” that Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress in 1974 and that informed its impeachment proceedings, which were already underway.
The Road Map was very different from the Starr Report. Where Starr wrote a lengthy narrative, the Road Map was reportedly spare. Where Starr evaluated the legal relevance of the evidence he referred, the Road Map apparently contained no analysis and drew no conclusions. And where the Starr Report was in bookstores worldwide and today is just a Google search away, the Road Map is largely forgotten.
There’s a reason for that: The Road Map remains under seal at the National Archives. Kenneth Starr couldn’t read it. You can’t read it. And, remarkably for a document that may be the best model available for his current project, Mueller can’t read it either.
The three of us filed a petition on Thursday to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that seeks to rectify this problem.
[...]
In short, the time has come to release what may be the last great Watergate document still kept from the public.
Our complete filings before the court are available here:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/watergate-road-map-and-coming-mueller-report
"The Manafort Guilty Plea, the Mueller Investigation, and the President"
By Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, Benjamin Wittes
Friday, September 14, 2018, 12:21 PM
(Photo: Wikimedia/National Record and Archives Administration)
According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and publicly available. The other is a document most people have never heard of: the “Road Map” that Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress in 1974 and that informed its impeachment proceedings, which were already underway.
The Road Map was very different from the Starr Report. Where Starr wrote a lengthy narrative, the Road Map was reportedly spare. Where Starr evaluated the legal relevance of the evidence he referred, the Road Map apparently contained no analysis and drew no conclusions. And where the Starr Report was in bookstores worldwide and today is just a Google search away, the Road Map is largely forgotten.
There’s a reason for that: The Road Map remains under seal at the National Archives. Kenneth Starr couldn’t read it. You can’t read it. And, remarkably for a document that may be the best model available for his current project, Mueller can’t read it either.
The three of us filed a petition on Thursday to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that seeks to rectify this problem.
[...]
In short, the time has come to release what may be the last great Watergate document still kept from the public.
Our complete filings before the court are available here:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/watergate-road-map-and-coming-mueller-report
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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