Don't release the Mueller report

It would do more harm than good

Robert Mueller.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Alex Wong/Getty Images, eugenesergeev/iStock, U.S. Department of Justice via Getty Images)

Washington is clamoring for the release of the full report produced by Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation. Some people, including the president himself, want it to see the light of day because they think it will further vindicate Donald Trump. Some insist that Attorney General William Barr, an old friend of Mueller, must somehow have misrepresented the special counsel's conclusions. Others still just don't want this story to go away because it gives them something to write about and discuss on television. Publishers are listing editions of the report on Amazon with projected page counts and made-up release dates. Even Audible wants in on the action.

But they are all wrong. The Mueller report should not be released to the public any time soon. I, for one, would be happy to see it gathering dust in an archive somewhere until it is forgotten in 50 or a hundred years, only to be rediscovered long after the dissolution of the American empire by some bespectacled antiquary, who will publish an elaborate four-volume critical study of it entitled Die Lese- und Schreibfehler im Müller-Testament.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.