During questioning from Sen. Harris, AG Barr says he and Deputy AG Rosenstein did not review the underlying evidence in the Mueller report before releasing his 4-page summary.
After hearing Barr's testimony, several of those Democrats called for his resignation.Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Barr why he testified to Congress last month that he didn’t know whether Mueller supported Barr’s conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to say President Donald Trump had obstructed justice, even though Barr had received Mueller’s letter about two weeks earlier.
Earlier in Wednesday's more-than-five-hour hearing, the attorney general said Mueller had told him in their phone conversation that “the press reporting had been inaccurate” and he was concerned about Barr's description of the reasons why the special counsel's report did not reach a conclusion on obstruction.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also grilled Barr about his earlier testimony in light of Mueller's letter, which The Washington Post“Attorneys don't put things in writing unless they’re pretty serious about them,” Durbin said."There's an old rule in politics: A good politician doesn't write a letter and doesn't throw one away."
Harris then asked,"If then in any U.S. attorney’s office across the country, the head of that office, when being asked to make a critical decision about, in this case, the person who holds the highest office in the land and whether or not that person committed a crime, would you accept them recommending a charging decision to you if they had not reviewed the evidence?"
Trump discussed Barr's testimony in an interview on Boston Herald Radio's"The Adriana Cohen Show, saying, “I heard that the attorney general was really, really solid and did a great job today." When asked by Feinstein if Trump's actions constituted obstruction of justice, Barr answered, “We felt that that episode, the government would not be able to establish obstruction.""Well, to be obstruction of justice, the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding," Barr said."McGahn had already given his evidence" with testimony to Mueller.
“Asking Sessions to unrecuse himself we do not think is obstruction,” Barr answered. He added, “I don’t see any conflict between that and fully cooperating with the investigation.” Barr said he and Rosenstein, who is stepping down later this month, felt that, because of the massive interest in the probe, they had the responsibility to provide the public with some conclusion to avoid leaving such a high-profile investigation unresolved for several weeks while they worked to redact the report and make it public.
Barr responded that he had not exonerated Trump, repeating that he and Rosenstein did not have sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction offense. “The president never did anything to stop Mueller from doing his job,” Graham claimed, adding, “For me, it’s over.” Barr responded, “There’s no indication that [the Trump campaign] engaged in the conspiracy to hack or that they engaged in any action with respect to the dissemination that was criminal.”In statements after reports surfaced about Mueller's letter to Barr, several key House Democratic leaders called for Mueller to testify, while several others, including 2020 presidential contenders, demanded Barr resign.
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