Congress won't hear about Mueller's key findings until Sunday at the earliest

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr will take at least another day to review Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report before he briefs Congress on its main points, a person familiar with the situation told VICE News on Saturday.

The Department of Justice told congressional leaders that “no additional info will be provided today,” the person said.

Anticipation is running high in Washington following the delivery of Mueller’s final report to the attorney general on Friday — a document described by Department of Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec as “comprehensive,” although she declined to be more specific.

Yet that description suggests Mueller decided not to file a bare-bones report, an outcome legal experts following his work closely said was possible under the special counsel regulations.

Barr has said he may brief Congress on Mueller’s “principal conclusions” as early as this weekend, but he has given no clues yet in public about when that might happen.

READ: Now the fight for the Mueller report begins

The submission of Mueller’s final report marked the formal end of his 22-month investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, a probe that resulted in criminal charges against 34 people and three companies.

Mueller’s marching orders require him to submit a “confidential” report to the attorney general explaining his decisions on whether to file charges. The rules also give Barr plenty of leeway to decide how much of those findings to make public.

READ: This is everything we know about the Mueller investigation

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle called on Barr to make as much of the report public as possible. Democrats threatened legal challenges for the right to review not just the entire report, but also the underlying evidence used to draft it.

“Congress and the American public must see every single word of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, said in a statement to VICE News. “And we should see it at the same time as President Trump, a subject of the investigation, sees it. Nothing less than the rule of law in our country is on the line.”

Cover image: U.S. Attorney General William Barr departs his home March 23, 2019 in McLean, Virginia. Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered the report from his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to Barr yesterday and Barr is expected to brief members of Congress on the report this weekend. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)