The deployment of federal agents to confront protesters and rioters and attacks on the Russia investigation highlighted a contentious hearing.
Attorney General William P. Barr vigorously defended the federal response to nationwide protests and civil unrest in a combative congressional hearing on Tuesday where Democrats accused him and other Trump administration officials of suppressing protesters’ rights in an overly violent crackdown. The attorney general also insisted that he intervened in the criminal cases of President Trump’s allies Roger J. Stone Jr. and Michael T. Flynn to uphold the rule of law, not to do Mr. Trump’s bidding. Mr. Barr’s defenses punctuated an outright hostile election-season oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats tried to portray him as a dangerous errand boy for the president. But Mr. Barr insisted he was trying to enforce the law against what he characterized as rioters using demonstrations as cover to commit crimes. He also said of the criminal cases that grew out of the Russia investigation that he wanted to be fair to Mr. Trump’s former advisers. “The president’s friends don’t deserve special breaks, but they also don’t deserve to be treated more harshly than other people,” he said. “And sometimes that’s a difficult decision to make, especially when you know you’re going to be castigated for it.” The five-hour hearing, Mr. Barr’s first on Capitol Hill in more than a year, grew increasingly heated as Democrats spoke over his attempts to respond to their accusations. At one point, the attorney general exclaimed, “I’m going to answer the damn question.” Democrats were clearly angered as Mr. Barr quibbled over small details or ignored questions about his rationale or actions. But amid frequent sniping, lawmakers came away with few, if any, new facts or admissions. Democrats have sought to hold Mr. Barr to account since he presented a summary last year of the then-secret findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that a federal judge later said was “distorted” and “misleading” in a way that torqued public understanding of its findings in Mr. Trump’s favor. But Mr. Barr — who also did not testify before the House Judiciary Committee when he was attorney general the first time, under President George Bush — repeatedly put off requests to appear before the committee, saying he was too busy. In the meantime, lawmakers accumulated a long list of additional grievances that they aired on Tuesday. “You have aided and abetted the worst failings of the president,” Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the committee chairman, said at the start of the hearing to Mr. Barr, who sat impassively. Democrats charged that Mr. Barr had intervened improperly in the Stone and Flynn cases to please Mr. Trump. They accused him of helping the president promulgate bogus fears about voter fraud to help shake confidence in November’s election. And they warned that under Mr. Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department was trampling on the civil liberties of citizens like those demanding that the nation eradicate institutionalized racism against Black Americans. “The president wants footage for his campaign ads, and you appear to be serving it up to him as ordered,” Mr. Nadler said. “You are projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives. Shame on you, Mr. Barr.” The attorney general denied the charges, arguing at first calmly and then more irritably that federal agents confronting protesters were not trying to quash peaceful expressions of free speech, but to deal with “mob” violence.
