Acting AG: No Russia probe intrusion
Whitaker rebuffs effort to get update on inquiry
WASHINGTON — Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said Friday that he has “not interfered in any way” in the special counsel’s Russia investigation as he faced a contentious and partisan congressional hearing in his waning days on the job.
The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee was the first, and likely only, chance for newly empowered Democrats in the majority to grill an attorney general they perceive as a Donald Trump loyalist and whose appointment they suspect was aimed at suppressing investigations of the Republican president.
Yet Democrats yielded no new information about the status of the Mueller probe as Whitaker repeatedly refused to discuss conversations with the president or answer questions that he thought might reveal details.
Though exasperated — he drew gasps and chuckles when he told the committee chairman that his five-minute time limit for questions was up — Whitaker nonetheless sought to assuage Democratic concerns by insisting that he had never discussed the Mueller probe with Trump or other White House officials and that there had been no change in its “overall management.”
“We have followed the special counsel’s regulations to a T,” Whitaker said. “There has been no event, no decision, that has required me to take any action, and I have not interfered in any way with the special counsel’s investigation.”
Republicans made clear they viewed the hearing as political grandstanding, especially because Whitaker might have less than a week left in the job, and some respected his wishes by asking questions about topics other than Mueller’s probe into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The Senate is expected to vote as soon as next week on confirming William Barr, Trump’s pick for attorney general.
“I’m thinking about maybe we just set up a popcorn machine in the back because that’s what this is becoming. It’s becoming a show,” said Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, who accused his Democratic colleagues of “character assassination.”