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Justice Department censored CNN headline, New York Post quotation, and more

National Security ArchiveBlack blotches mar the surface of the Mueller Report like measles cases tracked on a map of Brooklyn.  Some 176 of the 448 pages feature at least one redaction, according to the Washington Post count, and 10 pages are blacked out in full. The Justice Department redactions are on their face overdone.  The censors working for Attorney General William Barr even blacked out people’s names that appear in published news accounts or in public quotations.  For example, on Volume 2, page 128, there’s a black blotch and the code “HOM” [claiming Harm to Ongoing Matter] over a name that President Trump told the New York Post in a direct quote during a November 2018 interview, a quote the Post subsequently published.  The name is Roger Stone, the currently indicted former partner of convicted felon and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort…These unwarranted deletions are black marks on Barr’s record and on the credibility of the Justice Department. The idea that leaving in any mention of Stone would somehow do harm to the ongoing prosecution cannot be true, given the amount of information the government has already had to file in court to indict Stone, not to mention the vigorous counter arguments made by a vociferous Stone and his defense team…”

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