President denies he asked Barr to clear him
Trump lashes out at press, calls ‘LameStream Media’ the ‘Enemy of the People’
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump wanted Attorney General William Barr to hold a press conference to declare he broke no laws during his July phone conversation with Ukraine’s president in which Trump pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Democrats, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Now Trump is angrily lashing out at the revelation, first reported by the Washington Post. He tweeted Thursday that the claim “is totally untrue and just another FAKE NEWS story with anonymous sources that don’t exist.”
The president also continued to lash out at the press, declaring “The LameStream Media” to be the “Enemy of the People.”
Barr rebuffed the president’s request, which came in September, around the time that the White House released a rough transcript of the July 25 call at the centre of the House impeachment probe.
The person familiar with the matter said Trump has continued to express irritation at Barr’s refusal to publicly speak out in his defence, though other officials later explained the department’s reasoning.
House Democrats are investigating Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as aid money was being withheld.
Trump insists he did nothing wrong. “The Justice Department already ruled that the call was good,” he wrote Thursday.
That appears to be a reference to a statement from the Justice Department in September announcing that the department’s
Criminal Division “reviewed the official record of the call and determined, based on the facts and applicable law, that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted.”
Barr famously held a news conference ahead of the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian election meddling. Barr painted what many saw as an overly flattering picture as it related to Trump and repeatedly declared investigators had found “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.