Thread by @ZoeTillman

Late night action: The Biden administration will argue to keep most of a Trump-era Justice Department memo secret buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…

DOJ filed notice late last night that it would partially defend the Trump admin's decision to keep a March 2019 memo secret that Bill Barr cited in clearing Trump of obstruction.

A judge had slammed DOJ's handling of all this as "disingenuous." buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…

The case was briefed in the fall. This is first time DOJ under AG Garland weighed in, and lawyers said the judge had misunderstood the purpose of the memo and blamed "imprecision" in the govt's earlier briefs. The word "regret" appears five times.
buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…

This is a key thing at the heart of this case — pre-Trump and across administrations, DOJ generally has argued in favor of broader interpretations of what's exempt from FOIA and the govt's power to decide what records should be kept secret

Since there seems to be some confusion: The judge has ordered her full May 3 opinion unsealed, not the DOJ memo at issue. DOJ said last night they didn't oppose unredacting the judge's opinion now that they've released the first sections of the memo
buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…

Judge Amy Berman Jackson gives CREW until Friday to weigh in on DOJ's request to pause disclosing the full OLC memo while the govt appeals. She throws some shade, noting DOJ's "late night filing" and that the govt's explanation has shifted ("states for the first time")

Here's CREW, the group that sued to get the OLC memo released: "In choosing to fight Judge Jackson's decision, the DOJ is taking a position that is legally and factually wrong and that undercuts efforts to move past the abuses of the last administration"

Here's Judge Amy Berman Jackson's unredacted opinion explaining her decision to order DOJ to release the March 2019 OLC memo re: Trump and obstruction. She says the memo's redactions and info provided by DOJ "deliberately obscured" the purpose of the memo assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2078…

More unredacted from Jackson: "So why did the Attorney General’s advisors, at his request, create a memorandum that evaluated the prosecutive merit of the facts amassed by the Special Counsel? Lifting the curtain reveals the answer to that too: getting a jump on public relations"

I'm reminded of way way back in Feb. 2019, when Jackson admonished Roger Stone to cool it with talking publicly about his case (this was before the full social media gag order): "This is a criminal proceeding and not a public relations campaign" buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetil…