Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a summary judgment Monday accusing then-Attorney General William Barr of misleading the court during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a memorandum from the Special Counsel to Barr, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) demurred on the grounds of the deliberative process and attorney-client privileges. Jackson ruled that the memo contained “strategic, as opposed to legal” advice that was inappropriately withheld, and that Barr had already reached a predetermined conclusion that then-President Donald Trump would not be charged with obstruction of justice.

Jackson wrote:

In other words, the review of the document reveals that the Attorney General was not then engaged in making a decision about whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice; the fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given.

Barr’s characterization of the case against Trump in his letter to Congress, which Jackson criticized as being made on information that “he’d hardly had time to skim, much less study closely,” led Trump to publicly declare his exoneration. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team publicly argued that Barr’s summary of the findings was misleading and “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of the Office’s work and conclusions.” The team called for the immediate release of the evidence, but Barr refused.

Weeks later, Barr appeared before Congress to testify that the evidence did not support prosecution and that his decision to not charge Trump was made on the advice of the Office of Legal Counsel. It is the memorandum containing that advice that Jackson has now ordered to be released.

Jackson found that the memorandum had two sections, which when read in their proper context contradicted Burr’s claims that they gave no answer to whether the evidence supported prosecution. That context included recommendations of action to be taken by the DOJ, which Barr omitted from both his description of the memorandum and his justification for withholding it. In doing so, Burr “obscured the true purpose of the memorandum” to the court.

Summary judgment on FOIA cases may be granted on the basis of agency affidavits when they are not called into question by contradictory evidence or by evidence of agency bad faith. Jackson found that “here, we have both.” Although the DOJ’s affidavits claim that Barr’s decision was made based on the memorandum’s advice, the evidence now suggests that the decision to not prosecute was made well beforehand.

Jackson concluded that Barr and his DOJ were “disingenuous” to the court at the time of the investigation and now and that it is time for the public to see the memorandum’s true findings.

The DOJ, now under the Biden administration, has until May 17 to challenge the summary judgment.