Barr, lawmakers do battle
In pointed exchanges, attorney general defends his handling of Mueller report
WASHINGTON – Attorney General William Barr repeatedly clashed with lawmakers Wednesday over his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, rebutting Democrats’ complaints that he misrepresented the report to favor President Donald Trump while defending his own conclusions that the president had not sought to obstruct the probe.
Barr’s testimony in a grueling fourhour Senate hearing, his first public remarks since Mueller’s redacted report was publicly disclosed last month, had been widely anticipated. But the session took on new urgency in the hours before it opened when the Justice Department revealed that Mueller had privately objected to Barr’s initial summary of the investigation, which he said “threatened to undermine” the purpose of the inquiry.
Because Mueller’s office declined to
“We’re out of it. We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.” Attorney General William Barr
draw a conclusion about whether Trump had committed obstruction, the attorney general told the panel that he acted to resolve the question that had threatened to derail Trump’s presidency.
The attorney general repeatedly said the evidence investigators gathered didn’t establish that the president committed a crime and declared that Trump had been “falsely accused,” but he declined to draw broader conclusions about the president’s conduct. Instead, he said, voters can read the special counsel’s report and decide.
“We’re out of it,” Barr said. “We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”
Later Wednesday, the Justice Department told lawmakers Barr would not attend a House hearing scheduled Thursday because of a dispute about how he would be questioned. His refusal is the latest and most confrontational step by the Trump administration to challenge Democrats who control the House of Representatives and are conducting wide-ranging investigations into the president.
Even as Barr was thrust to the center of a firestorm, Wednesday’s hearing underscored the widening political divide pitting Democrats skeptical of his handling of the inquiry and Republicans eager to either move on or investigate the origin of the Russia investigation, which began with the FBI before Trump took office.
“For me, it’s over,” Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said to open the hearing, lauding Mueller, defending the investigation’s results and declaring the question settled. “After all this time and all this money, Mr. Mueller concluded there was no collusion.”
But several Democrats said they were unsatisfied with Barr’s conclusion that there was no obstruction, and they criticized his handling of the release of Mueller’s report and his testimony at an earlier hearing in which he said he was not aware of concerns raised by Mueller’s office.
“I think it was purposely misleading,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said of Barr’s earlier testimony.
‘Bob, what’s with the letter?’
Hours earlier, the Justice Department confirmed Mueller had privately objected to a letter Barr delivered to Congress in March clearing Trump of having obstructed the investigation. In his March 27 letter, Mueller said Barr’s summary three days earlier “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” which led to “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”
According to Mueller’s letter and a Justice Department statement released late Tuesday, the special counsel expressed his differences with Barr at least three times: on March 25, the day after the attorney general released his summary of Mueller’s conclusions; then in the March 27 letter; and when the two spoke by telephone March 28.
Describing the call, Barr said he was joined around a speakerphone at the Justice Department with other top aides, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensetin.
“Bob, what’s with the letter?” the attorney general said, recalling how the conversation started. “He (Mueller) said they were concerned about the way the media was playing this. I asked him if he thought the letter was misleading or inaccurate. He said no,” Barr said.
“The letter was a bit snitty,” Barr later told the Senate panel, dismissing Democrats’ suggestions that it represented a serious rebuke of the attorney general. “I thought it was probably written by one of his staff people.”
But on April 9, Barr testified at a House subcommittee hearing about media reports that some officials in Mueller’s office were unhappy with his handling of the investigation report. Leahy pressed Barr on his reply to Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., who had asked whether he was aware that members of Mueller’s team had voiced frustration.
“I don’t know what members he was talking about,” Barr told Leahy.
The disclosure of Mueller’s letter prompted calls for Barr’s resignation from lawmakers including Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders rejected those criticisms: “Democrats only disgrace and humiliate themselves with their baseless attacks on such a fine public servant.”
Barr, meanwhile, defended his March 24 letter disclosing Mueller’s “bottom-line conclusions,” despite Mueller’s objections, because the “body politic was in a high state of agitation.” He compared the letter to a verdict rather than a summary of the report.
“I didn’t believe it was in the public interest to let this go on for several weeks,” Barr told the committee. “We prepared the letter for that purpose: to state the bottom-line conclusions.”
In the telephone call after Mueller’s March 27 letter of objection, Barr said Mueller “wanted more put out.”
“He was very clear in what he was not suggesting: that we were misrepresenting his report,” Barr said, but that Mueller was concerned about press coverage of the report.
Among the harshest recriminations came from Hirono, accused Barr of lying when he said he wasn’t aware that Mueller had objected to any of his actions. “You lied to Congress,” she said, reading from a prepared statement. “You knew you lied, and now we know.”
Graham rose to Barr’s defense. “You have slandered this man, from top to bottom,” he said. “If you want more of this you are not going to get it.”
After withering criticism, Barr defended the president. “How did we get the point here where the president was falsely accused” of plotting with the Kremlin, he said. “To listen to the rhetoric you would think that Mueller found the opposite.”
Though the hearing was focused on Mueller’s inquiry, Graham offered up a critique of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. “This committee is going to look long and hard about how all of this started,” Graham said.
Seizing on obstruction
On the question of obstruction, Barr said he determined based on the evidence that no charges were warranted. He maintained that he and Rosenstein “concluded that, under the principles of federal prosecution, the evidence developed by the special counsel would not be sufficient to charge the president with an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
“We were frankly surprised that (Mueller) wasn’t going to come to a view on obstruction,” Barr told the panel. “We did not understand why the special counsel was not reaching a decision.”
On whether he “felt good” about his decision to clear Trump of obstruction, Barr said: “Absolutely.”
Democrats pressed Barr about his decision on obstruction charges, focusing on 10 episodes Mueller described in the report. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, DCalif., asked about Trump’s former White House counsel, Don McGahn, who told investigators that Trump ordered him to fire Mueller. Trump has denied the accusation.
Barr explained that Trump and McGahn were consistent in their explanations that the president never directed McGahn to fire Mueller but to have Rosenstein remove him for a conflict of interest. That would have led to the appointment of another special counsel.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked Barr whether misleading statements by Trump denying contacts with Russians, cited throughout the Mueller report, were lies. “History will judge you harshly,” Blumenthal said.
“I’m not in the business of determining when lies are told to the American people,” Barr said. “I’m in the business of determining whether a crime has been committed.”