Twitter Is Having a Field Day With the Mueller Report Redactions

Erica Gonzales
Photo credit: Brendan Hoffman - Getty Images
Photo credit: Brendan Hoffman - Getty Images

From Harper's BAZAAR

  • The full Mueller report was released today with substantial redactions, which readers promptly mocked on social media.

  • Twitter users especially poked fun at the phrase "harm to ongoing matter," which was one of the reasons for redaction. (Such information could affect current investigations.)

  • There are over 900 redactions in the document overall, according to NBC News.

The Justice Department released the full Mueller report today, giving the public a rare look at the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation into whether Donald Trump conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential election and whether he obstructed justice by interfering with the probe.

The full report (all 448 pages of it) is available for the public to view, but parts of the text were redacted by the Justice Department. According to The New York Times, Attorney General William Barr worked with his team and the special counsel to censor sensitive information after he first received the full report on March 22.

Photo credit: Tom Williams - Getty Images
Photo credit: Tom Williams - Getty Images

Per the Times, the redacted text includes: secret grand jury information; info regarding current investigations (labeled as "harm to ongoing matter"); content that could compromise the personal privacy of "peripheral third parties"; and classified information that might involve secret intelligence sources or methods (labeled as "investigative technique").

NBC News counted more than 900 redactions in the full document, including seven pages that are "blacked-out completely." Barr said the redactions are "limited," but the Internet felt otherwise.

Readers quickly took note of the thick black boxes covering the text and reacted humorously on Twitter.

Some even created their own versions of blacked-out text in response to the censored report.

A slew of tweeters were especially entertained with the phrase "harm to ongoing matter."

We may or may not start using this phrase in our everyday lives.

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