Russia probe rift goes public at Barr hearing
WASHINGTON — Private tensions between Justice Department leaders and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team broke into public view in extraordinary fashion Wednesday as Attorney General William Barr pushed back at the special counsel’s “snitty” complaints over his handling of the Trump-Russia investigation report.
Testifying for the first time since releasing Mr. Mueller’s report, Mr. Barr faced sharp questioning from Senate Democrats who accused him of making misleading comments and seeming at times to be President Donald Trump’s protector as much as the country’s top law enforcement official.
The rift fueled allegations that Mr. Barr has spun Mr. Mueller’s findings in Mr. Trump’s favor and understated the gravity of Mr. Trump’s behavior. The dispute is certain to persist, as Democrats push to give Mr. Mueller a chance to answer Mr. Barr’s testimony with his own later this month.
Mr. Barr separately informed the House Judiciary Committee that he would not appear for its scheduled hearing on Thursday because of the panel’s insistence that he be questioned by committee lawyers as well as lawmakers.
Mr. Barr’s decision — he
cites a disagreement over the questioning — comes the same day the department missed a committee deadline to provide the panel with a full, unredacted version of Mr. Mueller’s Russia report and its underlying evidence.
Those moves are likely to prompt a vote on holding Mr. Barr in contempt, and possibly the issuance of subpoenas — bringing House Democrats and the Trump administration closer to a prolonged battle in court, although the attorney general’s cancellation meant he would avoid another round of sharp questioning after testifying Wednesday
At Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee session, Mr. Barr said he had been surprised Mr. Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether Mr. Trump had tried to obstruct justice, and that he had felt compelled to step in with his own judgment that the president had committed no crime.
“I’m not really sure of his reasoning,” Mr. Barr said of Mr. Mueller’s obstruction analysis, which neither accused the president of a crime nor exonerated him. If Mr. Mueller felt that shouldn’t make a decision on whether to bring charges, Mr. Barr added, “then he shouldn’t have investigated. That was the time to pull up.”
Mr. Barr was also perturbed by a private letter Mr. Mueller, a longtime friend, sent him last month complaining that the attorney general had not properly portrayed the special counsel’s findings in a four-page letter summarizing the report’s main conclusions. The attorney general called the note “a bit snitty.”
“I said, ‘Bob, what’s with the letter? Just pick up the phone and call me if there is an issue,’” Mr. Barr said.
The airing of disagreements was all the more striking since the Justice Department leadership and Mr. Mueller’s team had appeared unified in approach for most of the two-year investigation into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
The revelation that Mr. Mueller, who’d been publicly silent for the entire investigation, was agitated enough to send a letter to Mr. Barr — which could, and did, become public — lent his words extra credibility with Democrats, who accused Mr. Barr of lying under oath last month when he denied that Mr. Mueller’s team was unhappy with how their work had been characterized.
Mr. Barr downplayed the special counsel’s complaints, saying they were mostly about process, not substance, while raising a few objections of his own in the other direction. He said that Mr. Mueller did not, as requested, identify grand jury material in his report when he submitted it, slowing the public release of the report as the Justice Department worked to black out sensitive information.
“His concern was he wanted more out,” Mr. Barr said. He said Mr. Mueller did not say that Mr. Barr had inaccurately characterized the investigation.
Mr. Barr also insisted that once Mr. Mueller submitted his report, his work was done and the document became “my baby.”
“It was my decision how and when to make it public,” Mr. Barr said. “Not Bob Mueller’s.”
Wednesday’s contentious Senate hearing gave Mr. Barr his most extensive opportunity to date to defend recent Justice Department actions, including a press conference before the report’s release and his decision to release a brief summary letter two days after getting the report.
But the hearing, which included three Democratic presidential candidates, also laid bare the partisan divide over the handling of Mr. Mueller’s report.
Some Republicans, in addition to defending Mr. Trump, focused on the president’s 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s email and campaign practices and what they argued has been a lack of investigation of them.
Televisions across the West Wing, including one just off the Oval Office used by the president, were tuned to cable coverage of Mr. Barr’s testimony. Mr. Trump told advisers he was pleased with Mr. Barr’s combative stance with Democratic senators, according to an administration official and a Republican close to the White House who were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.
Though Mr. Mueller reached no conclusion on obstruction, he did report that his probe established no criminal conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. Mr. Barr asserted that Mr. Trump was “falsely accused” during the investigation and that the president therefore lacked the criminal intent required to commit obstruction.
“I didn’t exonerate. I said that we did not believe that there was sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction offense which is the job of the Justice Department, and the job of the Justice Department is now over,” Mr. Barr said.
Democrats, for their part, moved to exploit the daylight between Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller to impugn the attorney general’s credibility. Some also called for Mr. Barr to resign, or to recuse himself from Justice Department investigations that have been spun off from Mr. Mueller’s probe.
They also pressed him on whether he had misled Congress last month when, at an unrelated congressional hearing, he professed ignorance about complaints from the special counsel’s team. Mr. Barr suggested he had not lied because he was in touch with Mr. Mueller himself and not his team.
Mr. Barr entered the hearing on the defensive following reports hours earlier that Mr. Mueller had complained to him in a letter and over the phone about the way his findings were being portrayed.