Barr moves to reassure Democrats
Vowing ‘‘I will not be bullied’’, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general asserted independence from the White House yesterday, saying he believed that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, that the special counsel investigation shadowing Trump is not a witch hunt, and that his predecessor was right to recuse himself from the probe.
The comments by William Barr at his Senate confirmation hearing pointedly departed from Trump’s own views, and underscored Barr’s efforts to reassure Democrats that he will not be a loyalist to a president who has appeared to demand it from law enforcement.
He also repeatedly sought to assuage concerns that he might disturb or upend special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as it reaches its final stages.
Some Democrats are concerned about that very possibility, citing a memo Barr wrote to the Justice Department before his nomination in which he criticised Mueller’s investigation for the way it was presumably looking into whether Trump had obstructed justice.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, of California, top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Barr the memo showed ‘‘a determined effort, I thought, to undermine Bob Mueller’’. Barr told senators he was merely trying to advise Justice Department officials against ‘‘stretching the statute beyond what was intended’’ to conclude that the president had obstructed justice.
Though Barr said an attorney general should work in concert with an administration’s policy goals, he broke from some Trump talking points, including the mantra that the Russia probe is a witch hunt, and said he frowned on ‘‘Lock her up’’ calls for Hillary Clinton.
Trump has equivocated on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and assailed and pushed out his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing because of his work with the Trump campaign. Barr stated without hesitation that it was in the public interest for Mueller to finish his investigation into whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with the Kremlin to sway the presidential election. –