Follow our live coverage.
Attorney General William P. Barr is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to discuss special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
●Barr has faced questions about his decision in the days after Mueller’s investigation ended to distill the inquiry down to two principal conclusions: that the special counsel did not find that Trump coordinated with Russia to interfere in the campaign and that he had not come to a decision on whether the president obstructed justice.
●The Washington Post reported Tuesday night that Mueller complained to the attorney general about that depiction, asserting in a letter that Barr “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the special counsel’s findings. Read the letter here.
● In a subsequent phone call, Mueller told Barr that he was concerned in particular that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and created public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials. Barr has asserted several times that in that call, the special counsel said that he was not upset with the accuracy of Barr’s summary but rather “that he wanted more out there to provide additional context.”
● The attorney general has also told senators that he has assigned staff to review allegations that there was “spying” conducted against the Trump campaign before the 2016 election and that the “lack of professionalism in the Clinton email investigation” is something that should be scrutinized.
The hearing began about 10 a.m. Here is The Washington Post’s live coverage:
2:03 p.m.: Barr says social media giants are doing better
Barr told senators that what Russia was able to do in the 2016 campaign posed a “far more insidious danger” to democracy than past attempts by foreign powers to influence U. S. campaigns, because of the Kremlin’s mastery of social media and other ways that Americans communicate with each other.
His comments came as he and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) voiced agreement that the Russians did interfere in the campaign — a key finding of the special counsel’s report but one that Trump has at times doubted. Barr said that the FBI has an aggressive task force to counter foreign influence in the U. S. system. And in a comment sure to please Silicon Valley, Barr said that he thinks private companies such as Facebook and Twitter are “stepping up their game and being more responsible” in addressing the problem.
2 p.m.: ‘I don’t recall,’ Barr says, when asked whether he discussed ongoing probes with the White House
The attorney general repeatedly told senators “I don’t recall” when asked whether he had conversations with the White House regarding the 14 ongoing probes that grew out of the special counsel’s investigation.
Barr said he was sure he had not had any “substantive” discussions about those investigations, under questioning from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). But, he added: “It’s possible that the name of a case was mentioned.”
“My recollection is I have not discussed them,” Barr said. “I can say very surely I did not discuss the substance of them.”
Democrats have leaped on several Trump administration officials for claiming to have had memory lapses about their actions and discussions regarding everything from conversations with Russian officials to interactions with the White House about matters sensitive to federal investigations of the president.
After Barr claimed not to remember which investigations he might have discussed with the White House, Blumenthal asked if he would agree to recuse himself from the investigations. Barr refused.
1:55 p.m.: Barr says he will review origins of Russia investigation and make results public
Barr said Wednesday that he hoped to make public whatever conclusions he draws from his review of the origins of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
The assertion came in response to questions from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). Asked whether he had explored the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign, Barr responded, “I am looking into it, and I have looked into it.”
He said he would seek to reveal publicly what he had found.
“At the end of the day, when I form conclusions, I intend to share it,” Barr said.
1:50 p.m.: Barr says campaigns that receive offers of help from foreign intelligence services should report it
Future political campaigns that receive offers of assistance or dirt on their opponents from foreign intelligence services should report such contacts immediately to the FBI, Barr told senators Wednesday.
His statement came in response to questioning from Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who described how one of Trump’s sons was offered dirt that he was told was part of a Russian government effort to help elect his father, and how the son responded, “I love it.”
If a future campaign received an offer of help from a foreign adversarial power — Coons proposed North Korea as a hypothetical — should they report it, Coons asked. Barr at first paused and appeared to be contemplating whether such an offer needs to be reported. Ultimately, he answered a more narrow question, regarding an offer of assistance specifically from a foreign intelligence service.
1:40 p.m.: Barr dodges defining legal standard to avoid potential campaign infiltration in the future
Barr avoided getting into specifics under questioning from Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who challenged him to define “what is legal and illegal about foreign intelligence services being involved in U. S. elections” — expressing the fear that a foreign adversary could try to influence future campaigns by infiltrating them.
Sasse’s key example was Paul Manafort, who was “on the payroll” of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whom Sasse defined as “a bad dude. He’s a bottom-feeding scum-sucker.”
Barr stressed that if the employee of a foreign adversary were being paid “for the purpose of participating in the campaign,” that would be illegal. But he had no answer for a situation in which campaign chairmen on the payroll of a foreign operative might just choose to volunteer for a campaign, calling it “a slippery area.”
Sasse’s line of questioning was aimed at establishing safeguards to deter foreign influence in future elections. But it highlighted the disconnect many lawmakers — mostly Democrats — have identified between the report’s finding of no criminal conspiracy and the questionable actions by Trump campaign operatives it details.
“I think it would be helpful for us to have a shared understanding as we head toward the 2020 election, of what campaign operatives should understand is beyond the pale,” Sasse told Barr. “I think there are a bunch of counterintelligence investigations happening right now in the United States where campaigns don’t really understand what the laws are, and I think we need a lot more clarity about it.”
1:37 p.m.: ‘I wasn’t hiding the ball’
Barr has said that his letter summarizing Mueller’s principal conclusions was clear because he acknowledged that Mueller had specifically written that his team had not exonerated Trump of obstruction of justice. “I wasn’t hiding the ball,” Barr told Coons.
Coons countered that Barr’s letter left out key details of Mueller’s work on obstruction, meaning the public did not learn of them for what Coons termed a “critical” three-week period. That prompted a quick retort from Barr, who interrupted to ask: “Why were they critical?”
Coons then offered a succinct description of Democrats’ concern — a political analysis more than a legal one. “My concern is that gave President Trump and his folks an open field to say, ‘I was completely exonerated,’ ” Coons explained. Barr did not respond.
1:30 p.m.: New Trump campaign video claims Obama ‘dropped the ball’ on Russian interference
As Barr was parrying lawmakers’ questions Wednesday, the Trump campaign provided some counterprogramming in the form of a new video accusing former president Barack Obama of ignoring Russian interference during the 2016 campaign.
The two-minute video includes footage of Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and other Democrats criticizing the Obama administration for not doing more on the issue. Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday on the topic, claiming that Obama “did NOTHING, and had no intention of doing anything,” when told about Russian interference before Election Day 2016.
Trump has long sought to counter scrutiny of his campaign’s response to Russia’s efforts by turning the focus to Obama. Philip Bump has a helpful rundown of The Washington Post’s reporting on what Obama did do, didn’t do and couldn’t do in response to Russian interference.
1:25 p.m.: Klobuchar, the first presidential candidate to question Barr, focuses on obstruction and election security
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the first of those on the Judiciary Committee running for president to question Barr, pressed the attorney general for his support of legislation to improve U. S. election security, then sparred with him on how he came to decide that Trump could not be charged with obstruction.
As has been the case throughout the hearing, Barr proved difficult to pin down. He said he was not familiar with Klobuchar’s legislation — which would mandate backup paper ballots, among other things — but he would examine it.
“I will work with you to enhance the security of our election, and I’ll take a look at what you’re proposing,” he said. “I’m not familiar with it.”
And, as he has with other lawmakers, Barr steadfastly defended his decision to declare that Trump could not be charged with obstruction of justice — even as Klobuchar ticked through, episode by episode, the detailed case Mueller had laid out.
“You look at the totality of the evidence,” Klobuchar said, as Barr dismissed each incident. “That’s what I learned when I was in law school.”
“There’s ample evidence on the other side of the ledger,” Barr countered later.
1:17 p.m.: Barr told Mueller he wasn’t interested in releasing more detailed summaries
Barr told senators that he “wasn’t interested” in honoring Mueller’s request to put out the executive summaries from his report ahead of time because they would have needed redacting, and he “was not in the business of putting out periodic summaries.”
Mueller registered complaints about how Barr’s four-page letter had portrayed the findings of his investigation, but the attorney general repeated Wednesday that what the special counsel felt “was inaccurate was the press coverage” — not Barr’s determinations.
“I thought what we should do is focus on getting the full report out as quickly as possible, which we did,” Barr added.
Barr’s comments were in response to questions from Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), who suggested that Barr could resolve much of the political wrangling over his motivations and those of other FBI and Justice Department officials by just releasing all of their documents pertaining to the 2016 elections.
“Just release them, instead of us going through all this spin and innuendo and rumors,” Kennedy said. “Let’s just let the American people see them.”
1:15 p.m.: Warren is the latest 2020 White House hopeful to call for Barr to resign
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) became the latest Democrat seeking the party’s presidential nomination to call for Barr’s resignation.
“AG Barr is a disgrace, and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that he’s not a credible head of federal law enforcement,” she said in a tweet. “He should resign—and based on the actual facts in the Mueller report, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the President.”
Earlier Wednesday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) wrote on Facebook that “Americans cannot trust William Barr to serve as our nation’s top law enforcement officer” and called for him to “resign immediately.”
Several other Democratic contenders have also called in recent days for Barr to step side, including former Obama Cabinet member Julián Castro, Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
1:09 p.m.: ‘Then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.’
Former FBI director James B. Comey has penned a new and exceptionally harsh op-ed in the New York Times, attempting to address, as he puts it, “What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?”
Comey’s conclusion, which he says is based on his own four months working for Trump, is that proximity to an “amoral leader” (a.k.a. Trump) reveals what he calls a “depressing” truth about people: “Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from.”
He says this is true because “Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.” He describes how Trump first lies privately, in an unending stream of talk, while his aides remain silent and thus complicit. Later, he writes, Trump requires acts of public fealty. He suggests (though does not state outright) that he himself fell prey to Trump’s pressure before he was fired as FBI director in May 2017 — failing to correct him in private or adequately defend institutions he had held dear while Trump attacked them publicly. He notes that many who work for Trump secretly believe that “in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person,” they must find a way to remain in their jobs, playing a “long game for your country, so you can pull it off, where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.”
So people stay and use Trump’s language (like Barr, he writes) and praise his leadership and tout his commitment to values (like Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein).
“And then you are lost,” Comey concludes. “He has eaten your soul.”
12:14 p.m.: House majority leader says lawmakers need to hear from Mueller, stops short of impeachment call
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday that Barr’s handling of Mueller’s report is a “very serious matter” and that the House needs to hear from him.
But Hoyer stopped short of saying Barr should be censured or impeached, as other Democrats have called for.
House Democrats have focused on Barr’s congressional testimony. In back-to-back hearings April 9 and 10, Barr disclaimed knowledge of the thinking of Mueller and members of his team of prosecutors investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“No, I don’t,” Barr said, when asked by Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) whether he knew what was behind reports that members of Mueller’s team were frustrated by the attorney general’s summary of their top-level conclusions.
These statements resurfaced after the revelation that Mueller had sent a letter to Barr two weeks earlier objecting to the attorney general’s characterization of the probe.
12:02 p.m.: ‘It was my baby,’ Barr says of Mueller report
In a testy exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R. I.), Barr suggested that Mueller’s opinions as to whether and how his report should be summarized or released publicly didn’t matter. Barr explained that Mueller was acting in the role of a U. S. attorney, under Barr’s supervision. Once Mueller submitted his report, Barr said his task had ended and it became Barr’s choice about what to do next.
“It was my baby,” Barr told senators.
In response to Whitehouse’s comments, Barr separately said that he regularly refers to appropriate government surveillance activities as “spying” and does not consider the word pejorative.
