AG lied to Congress, says Pelosi
Speaker levels rare charge after Barr skips testimony before House panel
WASHINGTON: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the top US law-enforcement officer of committing a crime by lying to Congress, escalating the showdown between Donald Trump’s administration and the Democrats investigating him.
Pelosi levelled the rare charge on Thursday after Attorney General Bill Barr skipped out on his scheduled testimony before a House of Representatives panel eager to probe his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Infuriated Democrats quickly threatened to censure him for contempt. Barr, in the job since February, had been grilled a day earlier in the Republican-led Senate, where Democrats accused him of whitewashing Mueller’s report in order to protect Trump.
But he was a no-show at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, after its leadership announced it would have lawyers cross-examine him following a round of questioning by the panel’s elected members.
Barr’s absence appeared to antagonise Pelosi, Trump’s Democratic nemesis in Congress, who accused the attorney general of misleading lawmakers.
“He lied to Congress,” Pelosi said, apparently referring to Barr’s testimony under oath before lawmakers in April. “That’s a crime.”
In that hearing, Barr claimed not to know whether Mueller supported his controversial memo summarising the report and said he did not know why members of Mueller’s team would be frustrated over the summary.
It emerged on Tuesday, however, that when Barr said this, he was already in possession of a March 27 letter from Mueller outlining the special counsel’s frustrations.
“If anybody else did that, it would be considered a crime,” Pelosi said.
“Nobody is above the law, not the president of the United States, and not the attorney general.”
Mueller’s report, the culmination of a 22-month probe yielding charges or convictions of 34 people and three companies, confirmed that Russian operatives tried to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. — AFP