Barr, Mueller trade barbs
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 Mueller’s report, 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 Barr has spun Mueller’s findings in Trump’s favor and understated the gravity of Trump’s behavior. The dispute is certain to persist, as Democrats push to give Mueller a chance to answer Barr’s testimony with his own later this month.
Barr separately informed the House Judiciary Committee that he would not appear for its scheduled hearing Thursday because of the panel’s insistence that he be questioned by committee lawyers as well as lawmakers.
That refusal sets the stage for Barr to possibly be held in contempt of Congress.
At Wednesday’s Senate Judicia
Committee session, Barr said he had been surprised Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether 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,” Barr said of Mueller’s obstruction analysis, which neither accused the president of a crime nor exonerated him. If Mueller felt that shouldn’t make a decision on whether to bring charges, Barr added, “then he shouldn’t have investigated. That was the time to pull up.”
Barr was also perturbed by a private letter 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,’ ” Barr said.
The airing of disagreements was all the more striking because the Justice Department leadership and 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 Mueller, who had been silent publicly for the entire investigation, was agitated enough to send a letter to Barr — which could, and did, become public — lent his words extra credibility with Democrats, who accused Barr of lying under oath last month when he denied that Mueller’s team was unhappy with how their work had been characterized.
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 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,” Barr said. He said Mueller did not say that Barr had inaccurately characterized the investigation.
Barr also insisted that once 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,” Barr said. “Not Bob Mueller’s.”
Wednesday’s contentious Senate hearing gave Barr his most extensive opportunity to date to defend recent Justice Department actions, including a news 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 presidenry tial candidates, also laid bare the partisan divide over the handling of Mueller’s report.
Some Republicans, in addition to defending 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 Barr’s testimony. Trump told advisers he was pleased with 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.
Trump tweeted Wednesday that the probe was “The greatest con-job in the history of American Politics!” He has told those around him that, after being disappointed by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he has found an attorney general loyal to him.