House Democrats said they are considering holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress after he informed them he won’t meet their deadline for…
House Democrats said they are considering holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress after he informed them he won’t meet their deadline for turning over the unredacted special counsel’s report and won’t appear to testify Thursday.
Mr. Barr says Democrats changed the rules on him, souring the spirit of comity he had shown in agreeing to testify.
Democrats said he was terrified of facing the skilled interrogator they had arranged and was giving excuses.
That clash came Wednesday evening, hours after Mr. Barr spent much of the day testifying across the Capitol in the Senate.
He scolded Democrats for refusing to accept the results of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report finding no evidence of successful coordination between Russia and President Trump to subvert the 2016 election.
During five hours of questions, Mr. Barr also dinged Mr. Mueller as “a bit snitty” in one of their communications, refused to recuse himself from other investigations that arose from Mr. Mueller’s work, and acknowledged he took Mr. Mueller at his word and didn’t delve into all the backup evidence that the special counsel assembled.
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Still, Mr. Barr said he has confidence in his conclusion that there was no case to be made against Mr. Trump for obstruction of justice, and even less evidence of coordination with Russia.
“The evidence now is that the president was falsely accused of colluding with the Russians and accused of being treasonous and accused of being a Russian agent, and the evidence now is that was without a basis,” said Mr. Barr, raising his voice.
“Two years of his administration have been dominated by the allegations that have now been proven false, and to listen to some of the rhetoric, you would think the Mueller report had found the opposite,” he said.
Democrats were having none of it.
One called Mr. Barr a liar, and others emerged to say he should be fired or neutered to the point where he can’t make decisions on key prosecutions.
“You lied to Congress,” said Sen. Maize K. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat. “You knew you lied, and now we know.”
The lying allegations stem from Mr. Barr’s testimony last month that he and Mr. Mueller saw eye to eye on the findings in the report, which Mr. Barr said cleared Mr. Trump of collusion and found too little concrete evidence to pursue a case of obstruction of justice.
After Mr. Barr released a four-page letter in late March offering that summary, Mr. Mueller fired off a letter saying the public was given the wrong impression and asked for more complete summaries to be revealed.
