‘I Want the Whole Damn Report.’ Democratic Presidential Candidates Call for Release of Mueller Report

In the aftermath of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report Sunday, nearly every Democrat running for President in 2020 has demanded that the full contents of the Mueller report be released to the public.

Some 2020 Democrats suggested that Barr’s summary of the report was suspect because he had been appointed by Trump. Sen. Cory Booker tweeted that the Barr letter was an “in-house summary from a Trump Administration official.” Julián Castro tweeted that “a politically appointed Attorney General shouldn’t decide how much of the Special Counsel report Congress can read.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted that Barr was “someone appointed by Trump to protect himself.”

“It’s like having your brother summarize your report card to your parents,” said former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and possible 2020 candidate Stacey Abrams on Sunday. “We should be deeply suspicious.”

Nearly everybody has demanded that the full report be released. “The American taxpayer paid for it and they ought to get to see it,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “If they don’t, everybody assumes something is being hidden.”

“I don’t want a summary of the report,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told a crowd Sunday in San Francisco. “I want the whole damn report, because nobody, especially this president, is above the law.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar recorded a short video in front of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building and posted it on Twitter. “Today, like everyone else, I want to see that Mueller report,” she said. “It’s time to make the entire report public. That’s justice.”

After Barr’s letter was released, Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted that “a short letter from Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General is not sufficient.” A few hours later, she elaborated at a campaign event in Atlanta. “The American public deserves transparency and accountability and the Mueller report must be made public for a full accounting of what happened,” Sen. Kamala Harris said to a cheering crowd at Morehouse College on Sunday. “The Attorney General of the United States must be required to come and testify before Congress instead of just submitting a four-page memo on what happened.”

But even though nearly every Democrat running in 2020 has demanded the release of the full report, some warn against expecting that the Mueller investigation will be the silver bullet that would end the Trump presidency. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg argued Sunday that the only way to cure the country from Trumpism is to beat him at the ballot box, not in court.

“It would be a mistake for Democrats to think that the way for the Trump presidency to end is by way of investigation,” Buttigieg told MSNBC on Sunday. “We’ve got to be paying attention to the kinds of conditions that made it possible for somebody like him to get here in the first place.”

“At the end of the day this campaign can’t be about him,” he continued. “I think part of how we lost our way in 2016 was it was much too much about him and it left a lot of people back home saying, ‘OK, but nobody is talking about me.’”