Later this week, Attorney General William Barr is expected to release a redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. In his 4-page summary of the 400-odd-page report, Barr noted that the special counsel “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government,” but did not come to a conclusion about whether the president had obstructed justice. That Barr took it upon himself to clear Donald Trump of obstruction, even though Mueller had not, raised a number of questions about how closely the A.G. had hewed to the spirit of the report, and whether he’d put his own Trump-supporting spin on it—questions that increased after members of Mueller’s team reportedly expressed frustration that Barr had shortchanged their work. And according to new insight from law professor Ryan Goodman, it seems those questions are entirely reasonable!

Per The Washington Post:

Barr has expressed willingness to release the [report]—but only once he and the Department of Justice have redacted material that fits into a few broad categories, including some information related to grand-jury proceedings. Barr’s stated position is that the redactions will be as narrow as they can be to ensure transparency. But once the redacted report is released, it’s safe to assume that some skepticism about what was withheld will continue. Particularly given Barr’s track record, as New York University professor of law Ryan Goodman wrote on Monday at the site Just Security, where he’s a co-editor in chief.

Goodman, who is a former Defense Department special counsel, details a remarkably similar fight from 1989 in which Barr, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was involved. The O.L.C. had determined that the F.B.I. was allowed to take people into custody in foreign countries without the consent of those countries’ governments—a ruling that seemed to pave the way, Goodman notes, for the eventual arrest of former Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega.

This was a contentious position to take, and Barr was asked to provide the memo offering the detailed legal rationale for allowing such detentions. He declined, instead offering a 13-page document that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” When Congress, and then The Washington Post, obtained the full opinion in 1991, it was quickly noted that several conclusions from the full document hadn’t been included in Barr’s summary. Foremost among them was that the opinion authorized the president of the United States to ignore the United Nations Charter.

Goodman quotes professor Jeanne Woods, who wrote in a 1996 Boston University law journal that “Barr’s congressional testimony attempted to gloss over the broad legal and policy changes that his written opinion advocated.”

As Goodman told the Post on Monday, the 1989 situation “breeds a lot of distrust of relying on Barr’s assurances that he’s handling this process in a way that’s faithful to the principles that he’s announced and will let the public know what the public should know.” Asked if he believed Barr acted in good faith at the time, Goodman said, “I think it’s difficult to imagine that Barr didn’t know what he was doing in failing to inform the Congress that he had concluded that the president of the United States could violate the U.N. Charter. In fact, that proposition has proved to be highly controversial ever since the O.L.C. opinion was publicly released and significant executive branch practice turns on that proposition.”

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