Senate confirms Barr to lead Justice
WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed William Barr as attorney general Thursday, putting him in charge of a Justice Department conducting multiple investigations of the campaign and administration of a president who has been sharply critical of its leadership.
The largely party-line vote of 54-45 came despite concerns from some Democrats about how Barr planned to oversee special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Barr was already at the Justice Department as the Senate voted. He was sworn in later Thursday afternoon as the country’s 85th attorney general by Chief Justice John Roberts at the White House.
Barr also expected to be briefed on the Mueller inquiry soon after his swearing-in.
Barr steps into a difficult job as the country’s top law-enforcement officer. President Donald Trump ousted his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in November after more than a year of criticism for recusing himself from the Russia probe that the president calls a “witch hunt.”
Sessions’ interim replacement, Matthew Whitaker, came under fire from Democrats in Congress after he rejected a recommendation from department attorneys that he too step aside from that case.
Barr, 68, is a widely respected Washington lawyer who has already served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.
While it is customary for new attorneys general to walk the halls at the department to greet staffers, Barr is forgoing that tradition, a concession to his low-key demeanor and the difficult work ahead.
Some of the most delicate questions he faces could be those posed by Mueller’s investigation and a separate criminal probe into illegal payments in the final months of the 2016 campaign to silence two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
“Multiple criminal investigations loom over the Trump presidency,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT., said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “These investigations may ultimately define it. And the president has reacted to them the only way he knows how: to attack relentlessly. That includes attacking investigators, witnesses, even the justice system itself.”
Barr has given little indication of how he would handle either case.
He told lawmakers he would allow Mueller to complete his investigation and that he would resist outside interference in investigators’ work. But he also holds expansive views of presidential power, and once wrote a memo questioning the legal theory that might permit Mueller to conclude that the president had tried to obstruct the Russia inquiry. And Barr has suggested the public might never learn all the details of what the special counsel has found.
Barr told senators at his confirmation hearing last month that he would release as much information as possible about Mueller’s findings. But he also cited a Justice Department policy to avoid publishing derogatory information about people who aren’t charged criminally.