Dershowitz praises Barr's testimony before Congress, says he's working hard to 'depoliticize' DOJ

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Alan Dershowitz: Bill Barr wants to depoliticize the Department of Justice

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Fox News Wednesday that Attorney General William Barr struck the right chord and "depoliticized" the Mueller report during his testimony before Congress on Tuesday.

"He very much wants to depoliticize the Department of Justice and bring it back to its origins as a non-partisan law enforcement agency," Dershowitz said. "He wants to have credibility. He wants to produce the report according to the law. He's not going to be pressured by the president, he's not going to be pressured by the Democrats, he's not going to be pressured by the Republicans. He's going to do it the right way. That's the projected image that he wants to convey."

Barr told lawmakers he expects to release his redacted version of the special counsel's Trump-Russia report within a week. Democrats hammered him for hours on the report, criticized his handling of the document and demanded it be turned over without redactions.

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Barr also told lawmakers that "the work of the special counsel was not a mystery to the people at the Department of Justice."

He added that "there was some inkling into the thinking of the special counsel," referring to an early March meeting with Mueller at the DOJ where the special counsel laid out his preliminary conclusions.

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Dershowitz says it was important for Barr to say that because "you don't want to fall into the situation where you have to make an important decision within 48 hours without having some advance knowledge."

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"I'm sure that Barr knew from Mueller what the thrust of the report was going to be," he said. "He had time to think about it, talk to his aides about it and time to make the kind of decision the attorney general is supposed to make. ...The special counsel works for the attorney general. It's the attorney general who is ultimately responsible for deciding how much of the report to release, how to act on it."