Sen. Kamala Harris to AG Barr: 'Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?' AG Barr: 'I'm trying to grapple with the word 'suggest.''
Attorney General William Barr faced a grilling from lawmakers on Wednesday over his controversial handling of special counsel Robert Mueller's report as the nation's top law enforcement officer returned to Capitol Hill for the first time since releasing the probe's highly anticipated findings earlier this month.
When Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked for notes from the phone call –- the existence of which was confirmed by Barr -– the attorney general snapped back, “Why should you have them?” “[Mueller] has not said that he conducted the investigation in order to turn it over to Congress, that would be very inappropriate, that is not what the Justice Department does,” adding, “I don't think Bob Mueller was suggesting the next step was for him to turn this stuff over to Congress to act upon. That's not why we conduct grand jury investigations,” Barr said.
"I want people to understand just how revealing it is. If this is their whole argument, they ain't got nothing." “I haven't been the only decision maker here now,” Barr responded. “Let's take the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, approved by the Senate 94-6 with specific discussion on the floor that he would be responsible for supervising the Russian investigation.”“No. We accepted the statements in the report as factual record,” Barr told Harris. “We did not go underneath it to see whether or not they were accurate. We accepted it as accurate.
Toward the end of questioning by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Barr circled back to his point on"How did we get to this point?" Blumenthal then turned his attention to the 14 remaining open cases referred to in the special counsel’s report and asked Barr whether he had discussed the matter with the White House.On the eve of Wednesday's hearing, 11 Senate Democrats – including Blumenthal – asked the Justice Department’s internal watchdog to investigate several matters related to Barr’s impartiality in handling the special counsel’s probe.
The first Democratic presidential hopeful to question Barr, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., spent the first few minutes of her allotted time advocating for Barr’s support for election security legislation, but then pivoted to a debate over whether the “totality of the evidence” suggested President Donald Trump obstructed justice.
“It was solved by putting out the whole report which was the -- that's why I think this whole thing is sort of mind-bendingly bizarre. I made clear from the beginning that I was putting out the report, as much of the report as I could, and it was clear it was going to take three weeks or so, maybe four, to do that,” Barr said. “And the question is, what's the place holder, and the place holder in my judgment was the simple statement of what the bottom line conclusions were.
Since news of Robert Mueller’s March 27 letter to Barr became public late Tuesday, Democrats have suggested that Barr may have misled Congress when he testified that he did not know whether members of the special counsel’s office were frustrated with his handling of the special counsel’s report. Barr reiterated his stance that he has no objection for Mueller testifying before Congress but declined to say whether Don McGahn should appear before Congress.
During questioning by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Barr said he was"not really sure" of Mueller's reasoning for not making a decision about obstruction and"didn't try to put words in his mouth." Sen. Dianne Feinstein questions Barr about the report's findings that Trump asked Don McGahn to fire Mueller and that Trump asked McGahn to change his story.
Barr deviated from his prepared statement to explain his interactions with Mueller and his calculus in denying the special counsel’s request to release executive summaries. Barr also said he was"surprised" that Mueller had not reached a conclusion on obstruction and expressed his frustration in a phone call with Mueller.
After ticking through Barr’s rollout of the special counsel’s findings, describing some of the report’s accounts of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians and recounting instances of possible obstruction of justice investigated by the special counsel’s office, Feinstein said, “Congress has both the constitutional duty and the authority to investigate the serious findings contained in the Mueller report.
Attorney General William Barr has arrived and taken his seat across the wood-paneled committee room from members eager to question the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
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