Barr Hearing: Attorney General Defends Handling of Mueller Report
Barr blames media for “reading too much” into his initial summary of Mueller report.
Mr. Barr told senators that he decided to release his initial letter characterizing Mr. Mueller’s bottom-line conclusions because of intense public interest, pushing back against criticism that he distorted the broader findings of the special counsel investigation.
“The body politic was in a high state of agitation,” Mr. Barr said, explaining why he decided to release the letter. Some analysts, he said, were suggesting that any delay in releasing Mr. Mueller’s report would indicate that the president faced legal jeopardy. “I didn’t feel that it was in the public interest to allow this to go on for several weeks.”
The attorney general acknowledged that Mr. Mueller was not happy about the impression left by Mr. Barr’s original letter. After receiving a letter from the special counsel urging the release of the executive summaries, Mr. Barr said he called Mr. Mueller to discuss the matter.
“He said that this concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction and he wanted more put out on that issue,” Mr. Barr said. But the attorney general added that Mr. Mueller was not complaining about the letter itself, only how it was being read. “He was very clear with me he was not suggesting we had misrepresented his report.” Mr. Barr said Mr. Mueller told him that “the press reporting had been inaccurate and the press was reading too much into it.”
The special counsel’s own words: “There is now public confusion.”
Mr. Mueller asked Mr. Barr twice to release more of his investigative findings in late March after Mr. Barr outlined the inquiry’s main conclusions in a letter to Congress, citing a gap between Mr. Barr’s interpretation and Mr. Mueller’s report, according to a letter released on Wednesday.
Mr. Mueller’s office first informed the Justice Department of their concerns on March 25, a day after Mr. Barr released his letter clearing Mr. Trump but declined to release the special counsel’s findings themselves.
“We communicated that concern to the department on the morning of March 25,” Mr. Mueller said in a second letter to Mr. Barr two days later. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”
Mr. Mueller asked the Justice Department to release the summaries of his findings. Mr. Barr declined.
— Michael S. Schmidt
Barr: Removing Mueller for supposed “conflicts” would not be the same as firing him.
Mr. Barr took on one of the most sensational elements of the special counsel’s report, arguing that the president was not actually trying to eliminate the investigation against him by seeking to remove Mr. Mueller.
Donald F. McGahn II, then the White House counsel, told the special counsel’s team that the president called him twice in the summer of 2017 and told him to tell the Justice Department to remove Mr. Mueller on the grounds of supposed conflicts of interests. “Mueller has to go,” he quoted the president telling him. Mr. McGahn, who considered the alleged conflicts “silly” and “not real,” refused to go along.
Mr. Barr told senators that did not constitute an illegal effort to impede the investigation. “There is a distinction between saying, ‘Go fire him, go fire Mueller,’ and saying, ‘Have him removed based on conflict,’” Mr. Barr said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat, asked what the difference would be.
“If you remove someone for conflict of interest there would presumably be another person” appointed as special counsel, Mr. Barr said.