Judge Amy Berman Jackson back in the news

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to release a March 2019 legal memo that advised then-Attorney General William Barr that the special counsel's investigation did not support prosecuting former President Trump, issuing a scathing decision that accused Barr and department lawyers of deceiving the public.

District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Monday ordered the DOJ to release the legal memo in two weeks in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).

The DOJ had argued in court that the full memo, portions of which have already been released, should be withheld because it fell under exceptions to the public records law for attorney-client privilege and deliberative government decision making.

But Jackson said on Monday that those claims were not consistent with her own review of the unredacted memo nor the timeline revealed by internal emails among top Justice Department officials.

Jackson, who was appointed to the federal district court in D.C. by former President Obama, wrote in a 41-page decision that "not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege."

"The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time," she added. LINK