Sen. ChrisCoons to Barr: 'If a foreign adversary...offers a presidential candidate dirt on a competitor in 2020, do you agree with me the campaign should immediately contact the FBI?' Barr hesitates before responding.
Anticipation for Barr's testimony reached new heights late Tuesday when several news outlets, including ABC News, reported that Mueller expressed frustration to the attorney general over the public's interpretation of his investigation when Barr issued a four-page letter describing the report's"principal conclusions" within 48 hours of receiving the special counsel's findings.
In a telling microcosm of Barr’s attitude about the special counsel’s report and President Trump’s conduct, Barr said: “I'm not in the business of determining when lies are told to the American people. I'm in the business of determining whether a crime has be committed.” Klobuchar raised the president’s praise of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for “refusing to break,” as Klobuchar said.
Democrats have accused Barr of"[shaping] the public's perception of the report," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, by penning a four-page letter describing the report’s “principal conclusions” within 48 hours of receiving the special counsel’s findings.Senators have returned to their seats in the committee room after an hour-long break.
During his questioning, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., invoked comments Barr made to Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., during a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, in which Barr said he did not know whether members of the special counsel’s office were “frustrated,” but he “[suspected] that they probably wanted more put out.”
“It's a call for the president to make,” Barr said. “I assume he'd be testifying about privileged matters.”Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy questioned Barr on what he's testified about whether he knew about concerns raised by Mueller and his team. "I think that if he felt that he shouldn't go down the path of making a traditional prosecutive decision, then he shouldn't have investigated," Barr said.
“To be obstruction of justice, the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding,” Barr said. “And there is a distinction between saying to someone go fire him, go fire Mueller, and saying have him removed based on conflict. They have different results.” Barr sought to defend his handling of the special counsel’s findings in opening remarks and explain his rationale for the report’s rollout.
The attorney general said the"body politic was in a high state of agitation" and said there was speculation about whether the president or members of his family might be indicted. Trying to keep up with all of the page-flipping during the Barr hearing as lawmakers refer to pages in the Mueller report? Read the full version here.Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committe, set the tone for Democrats in her opening remarks, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to Barr made public in its entirety just moments before Wednesday’s hearing commenced.
As Barr looked on, Graham urged members of the committee to “work to do to defend democracy against the Russians and other bad actors. And I promise the committee we will get on with that work hopefully in a bipartisan fashion.” The revelation of Mueller's sentiment toward the Justice Department's rollout of his report has further stoked Democrats' concerns about the attorney general's impartiality. In the weeks since Barr made a redacted version of Mueller's 448-page report available to the public, congressional Democrats have criticized what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called his"regrettably partisan handling of the Mueller report.
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