The acting attorney general is appearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats are asking about the Russia investigation and his oversight of it.
Mr. Whitaker’s predecessor overseeing the special counsel investigation, Rod J. Rosenstein, and his likely successor, William P. Barr, have both defended Mr. Mueller from the president’s accusation that the inquiry is a “witch hunt.” Mr. Whitaker was asked to do the same, and had a different answer.
“Would you say the special counsel’s investigation is a witch hunt?” Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, asked. “Are you overseeing a witch hunt?”
“Congressman, it would be inappropriate for me to talk about an ongoing investigation,” Mr. Whitaker said, but he added that he had not denied it any funds or interfered with Mr. Mueller’s work. He provided a similar answer to another Democrat.
The hearing quickly turned contentious as the committee chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, pressed Mr. Whitaker for details about when he had been briefed about the special counsel investigation and the acting attorney general refused to answer.
But under pressure from the chairman, Mr. Whitaker made news: He testified that he had not talked to Mr. Trump or senior White House officials about information: “I do not believe that I have briefed third-party individuals outside of the Department of Justice. I’ve received the briefings myself, and I’m usually the endpoint at that information.”
Mr. Whitaker ultimately declared that though he had been briefed, he had followed “the special counsel’s regulations to a T.”
“There’s been no event, no decision that has required me to take any action, and I’ve not interfered in any way with the special counsel’s investigation,” he said.
One moment in Mr. Whitaker’s testimony raised a potential conflict with news reports about events that led up to the Trump administration’s hiring of him.
Pressed by Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, to say whether he had spoken to Mr. Trump, his family, White House officials, or outside surrogates like Rudy Guiliani about his views of the Mueller investigation before he joined the Justice Department in the fall of 2017,Mr. Whitaker said definitively that he had not.
“Congresswoman, just to be clear, you are asking me whether I talked with anybody in the president’s circle or the White House about my views of the special counsel investigation when I was a private citizen and not at the Department of Justice?” he said.
“Correct, correct,” Ms. Lofgren replied.
“No I did not,” he said.
But, as The New York Times has reported, in July 2017 Mr. Whitaker interviewed with Donald F. McGahn II, then serving as Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, about the possibility of becoming the administration’s in-house lawyer who would manage and respond to the Mueller investigation.
The White House instead ended up giving that position to Ty Cobb, and Mr. Whitaker continued to make public comments that were skeptical about the Russia investigation before the administration made him chief of staff to Mr. Sessions.
A Justice Department spokeswoman had no immediate comment in response to an inquiry about how to square his testimony with the July 2017 interview with Mr. McGahn.
Mr. Whitaker told Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, that he would not discuss his decision to say last month that the Mueller inquiry was drawing to a close, citing the fact that it is an ongoing investigation.
“It seems to me you did talk about an ongoing investigation,” Ms. Lofgren said, adding that she would like to know what he meant by his comments.
Mr. Whitaker would say only that the special counsel investigation was proceeding consistent with the regulations outlined by Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.
Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the committee, criticized Democrats for obsessing over the special counsel investigation, but he had some questions of his own related to its work.
