William Barr Defiant As Senators Call for His Resignation for Lying to Congress in Senate Testimony

Attorney General William Barr defended his handling of Robert Mueller’s Russia report before a Senate panel, as Democrats accused him of intentionally misleading Congress and the public about the special counsel’s findings.

Barr was put on the defensive hours ahead of his testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee with the disclosure that Mueller had written a letter objecting that the attorney general misrepresented his report on Russia interference in the 2016 election.

“It was my decision how and when to make that public, not Bob Mueller’s,” Barr said of a summary he released in late March. Barr said questions about Mueller’s concerns are “mind-bendingly bizarre” because he always planned to issue the report after redacting certain sensitive details.

He testified that he felt he needed to “notify the people as to the bottom-line conclusion” before a redacted version of Mueller’s 448-page report could be released. When Mueller argued that his summaries should be made public quickly, Barr said, “I told Bob that I was not interested in putting out summaries and I was not interested in putting out the report piecemeal.”

But Democrats on the committee -- and beyond -- challenged Barr’s explanation of his differences with Mueller. Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor that the disclosure raises “damning questions about his impartiality and about his fitness.”

Mueller contacted Barr to express his displeasure after the attorney general issued his four-page letter in March characterizing the main findings of Mueller’s investigation.

“The summary letter the department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote.

Mueller wrote that Barr’s letter created “public confusion” about important parts of the results of the special counsel’s 22-month probe. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the special counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations,” Mueller wrote in the letter reported Tuesday evening by the Washington Post.

Barr told the Senate panel near the close of the hearing that “the letter is a bit snitty, and I think it was probably written by one of his staff.”

Read Mueller’s letter to Barr questioning his summary of the Russia report

While the Justice Department portrayed Barr’s differences with Mueller as a friendly exchange of opinion, Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on “CBS This Morning” that Barr should resign because he “deliberately” misled Congress when he testified he didn’t know whether Mueller agreed with his summary of the findings.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary panel’s chairman, opened the hearing by saying he was satisfied with Mueller’s report and said “for me, it is over.”

But Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, said that Mueller’s report contained “substantial evidence of misconduct” and that the committee needed “to hear directly from the special counsel.”

Barr repeated his past statement that he’d have no objection to Mueller appearing before Congress, and Graham promised Mueller would have a chance to address any inaccuracies in Barr’s account of their conversations.

Read more: Barr Says Trump Order to Fire Mueller Wasn’t Proved ‘Corrupt’

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement Tuesday evening that Barr called Mueller after receiving the special counsel’s letter.

“In a cordial and professional conversation, the special counsel emphasized that nothing in the attorney general’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading,” Kupec said in the statement. “But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the special counsel’s obstruction analysis.”

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