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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/barr-not-corrupt-trump-interfere-unfair-investigation

Barr Gives Trump A Pass For Interfering With Probe He Thought Was ‘Unfair’

Attorney General Bill Barr breezily explained away President Trump’s habitual interference with the federal Russia investigation in Wednesday testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Because Trump felt “falsely accused” by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which he felt was “propelled by his political opponents,” it was only natural that he would try to stop it, Barr testified.

As the attorney general put it: “That is not a corrupt motive.”

This rationalization basically gives the President carte blanche to interfere with any probe he feels unfairly targeted by. It echoes Barr’s previous sympathetic statements about Trump trying to alter witness testimony and urging officials to fire Mueller because he felt “frustrated.”

The new remarks came in questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) about Barr’s crucial determination that Trump didn’t obstruct justice with these sorts of moves.

Barr told Feinstein that the President was within his right to try to get Mueller ousted as special counsel because he felt that the entire investigation was flawed.

“If the President is being falsely accused—and the evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false—and he knew they were false, and he felt that this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for replacing an independent counsel,” Barr said.

“That’s another reason that we would say that the government would have difficulty proving this beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/barr-says-we-have-not-waived-executive-privilege-trump-lawyer

Barr Says ‘We Haven’t Waived Executive Privilege’ As If He’s Trump’s Lawyer

In an odd turn of phrase Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr said “we haven’t waived executive privilege” while speaking about former White House Counsel Don McGahn testifying before Congress.

No matter what Trump thinks, it is not the attorney general’s job to protect the president — Trump has a whole staff of his own lawyers for that.

As to the idea that Trump could extend executive privilege over the testimony of McGahn, now a private citizen, that’s a trickier matter. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has been threatening this week that the President could claim privilege to block McGahn, a star witness in the redacted Mueller report, from releasing damaging information before the House Judiciary Committee.

It’s not entirely clear who would win the privilege battle, but here’s a good Washington Post rundown. In sum, the President’s case seems to be weakened by virtue of the fact that the House Democrats would be questioning him on his testimony to Mueller’s team, which the White House already allowed him to do (and thus is inherently un-privileged).
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/barr-blames-mueller-delay-release-report

In New Gambit, Barr Blames Mueller For Delay In Release Of Report


Faced with a bombshell Washington Post report revealing that special counsel Bob Mueller was unhappy with Attorney General Bill Barr’s March 24 letter summarizing his long-awaited report, Barr is blaming Mueller for the weeks-long gap between the completion of the report and its release.


Barr began his Wednesday hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee with an open statement complaining, yet again, about the form in which Mueller submitted the report to the Justice Department.

Barr explained that he asked Mueller at a March 5 hearing to identify 6E material (grand jury information) that must be redacted when he submitted the report to Barr.

“I reiterated to special counsel Mueller that in order to have the shortest possible time before I was in a position to release the report, I asked that they identify 6E material,” Barr said Wednesday morning.

“Unfortunately it did not come in that form and it quickly became apparent that it would take about three or four weeks to identify that material and other material that had to be redacted,” Barr added. “So there was necessarily going to be a gap between the receipt of the report and getting the full report out publicly.”

In his letter, Mueller said his team intentionally submitted executive summaries that were thoroughly vetted so that they could be released to the public as soon as his report was submitted. Mueller urged Barr to make the summaries available, but Barr declined, instead releasing what he claimed were the special counsel’s “top-line conclusions.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/republicans-focus-fbi-justice-department-barr-hearing

At Barr Hearing On Mueller Report, GOP Senators Only Want To Talk Conspiracy

GOP senators on Wednesday gave Attorney General Bill Barr an opening to pivot from his misleading handling of the release of the Mueller report to another direction: alleged FBI spying on the Trump campaign.

Barr jumped at the opportunity, chiming in to lawmakers that he has Justice Department attorneys “helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016.”

Within 10 minutes of the hearing coming to order, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was deep in the weeds dissecting Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Graham also did a dramatic reading of texts between two high-level FBI officials during the 2016 election, cherrypicking the most damaging examples — even sharing, unfiltered, one exchange in which Trump was called “a fucking idiot.”

In his questioning, Graham asked Barr a series of yes/no questions having to do with investigating the investigators. Graham asked if Barr “shared my concerns with the FISA warrant process” and “that the lack of professionalism in the Clinton email investigation is something we should all look at?”

“Yes,” Barr flatly replied.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Barr if Congress would receive a report regarding alleged FBI spying, to which the attorney general replied: “I envision some kind of reporting at the end of this.”

Grassley also broached the topic of the Steele dossier, commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. For Grassley, the dossier appears to be a route to accuse Democrats of participating in the Russian interference campaign.

“The Steele dossier was central to the now-debunked collusion narrative,” Grassley said. “For a full accounting, shouldn’t the special counsel have considered on whether the Steele dossier was part of the Russian disinformation and interference campaign?”

“Special counsel Mueller has put out his report, and I have not yet had anyone through the full scope of the investigation,” Barr replied. “I am trying to assemble all the existing information out there about it.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) moved the discussion towards allegations that President Obama was incompetent in preventing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Cornyn did not mention Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)’s role in the issue, where he told Obama in October 2016 that he would refuse to sign on to a joint statement about the interference and treat it as a political attack.

Cornyn asked Barr “why didn’t the Obama administration do more” to probe the Russian campaign.

Barr went on to cite the Mueller report’s description of Russian interference efforts, and then said: “I was thinking to myself, if that had been done starting in 2016, we would be much further along.”

Cornyn then asked “how do we know that the Steele dossier itself…is not Russian disinformation?”

“I can’t state that with confidence,” Barr replied. “And that is one of the areas that I’m reviewing.”

Senate Republicans had signaled in advance that they intended to question Barr about how the Mueller probe came about.

The GOP has sporadically pursued a strategy in which it tried to “investigate the investigators” with varying levels of success since Mueller’s appointment in May 2017.

Much of that has focused on FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, with GOP senators attempting to portray text exchanges between the two former lovers as evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. The pair had sent messages to each other during the 2016 campaign that were critical of Trump, while also expressing doubt about allegations of collusion with Russia.

Other allegations revolve around the supposed role of the Steele dossier in the investigation’s early stages.

Barr himself suggested during testimony before Congress last month that “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign, before walking the statement back while under intense public criticism.

In the Mueller report, the special counsel provides an accounting of how his probe began. In the second volume, Mueller details how his appointment came after months of turmoil around former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the firing of former FBI director Jim Comey.

“When Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I‘m fucked,” the report reads.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/william-barr-obstruction-of-justice-robert-mueller-trump

Barr Blames Mueller For Making Him The Decider On Trump Obstruction

In Attorney General Bill Barr’s telling, it is special counsel Robert Mueller’s fault that the attorney general, and not the special counsel, made the ultimate call on whether President Trump obstructed justice.

At hearing Wednesday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr recalled being “surprised” when Mueller told him at a March 5 meeting that the special counsel was “not going to reach a decision on obstruction.” Mueller would ultimately submit his full report to Barr later that month.

“We asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this and the basis for this,” Barr said, of the March 5 meeting. “Special counsel Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that but for [a DOJ opinion barring the indictment of a sitting president], he would have found obstruction.”

Barr claimed that Mueller’s team told him they were still “formulating” their explanation for not coming to a conclusion on criminal obstruction. However, Barr himself felt like it was a prosecutor’s job to make a call one way or another, he said in his testimony.

“The powers [Mueller] was using, including the power of using the grand jury and using compulsory process exists for that purpose, the function of the Department of Justice in this arena, which is to determine whether or not there has been criminal conduct,” Barr said. “It’s a binary decision. Is there enough evidence to show a crime? And do we believe a crime has been committed? We don’t conduct criminal investigations to just collect information and put it out to the public. We do so to make a decision.”

He took a shot at Mueller for continuing an obstruction probe, which examined conduct that occurred in 2018, if he was not going to make a prosecutorial decision.

“Why were those investigated if, at the end of the day, you weren’t going to reach the decision?”

Barr’s decision to formally clear Trump of criminal obstruction was striking given that Mueller discussed at length in his report why he felt unable to say one way or another whether Trump’s conduct amounted to crime.

An opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that bars the indictment of a sitting president weighed on how Mueller approached the obstruction probe. Mueller considered the fairness of accusing the President of a crime when Trump would not have the venue of a trial to rebut the allegations, given that the special counsel was unable to charge him due to the OLC opinion. Because of those and other factors, Mueller had determined he’s team would “not make a traditional prosecutorial judgement,” and therefore, would “not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct.”

While the evidence and circumstances had presented Mueller’s team with “difficult issues” they would need to resolve if they were to make a prosecutorial judgement, they would have said in their report if the investigation had led them to conclude the President had not obstructed justice.

“Based on the facts and applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgement,” the report said.

Rather than let speak for themselves the limitations Mueller put on his obstruction probe, Barr took it upon himself to deem the evidence Mueller turned up insufficient to bring charges — with or without the OLC opinion.

Barr, in a letter to Congress last month, said he made the call that Trump’s conduct could not be prosecuted with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and in consultation with OLC experts. He said OLC opinion was not a factor in their prosecution, a point that may have been technically true. But at a press conference just before the Mueller’s report itself was released, he went a step farther and made claims about how Mueller viewed the OLC opinion that have been hard to square with the report itself.

“We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion,” Barr said. “And he made it very clear several times that that was not his position. He was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found a crime.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/barr-trump-defensive-briefing

Barr Can’t ‘Fathom’ Why Trump Didn’t Get Defensive Briefing On Russia. But He Did.

Attorney General Bill Barr falsely stated that the FBI failed to give the Trump campaign a defensive briefing on the threat posed by Russia during the 2016 campaign, playing into a line of questioning from Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) during the Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.


Cornyn accused the Obama administration of failing to do more to stop the Russian election meddling threat and claimed that the Justice Department and FBI “decided to place their bets on Hillary Clinton and focus their efforts on investigating the Trump campaign.” He then argued that Congress must now probe what the Obama administration did to put their “thumb on the scale” for Clinton.

The Republican senator then asked Barr whether the Trump campaign received a defensive briefing during the 2016 campaign on “what the Russians were trying to do and advise him to tell people affiliated with his campaign to be on their guard and be vigilant about Russian efforts to undermine public confidence in the election.”

“My understanding is that didn’t happen,” Barr said.

“I think under these circumstances, it’s one of the things I can’t fathom — why it did not happen,” Barr continued when asked by Cornyn if this would be an “extraordinary or notable failure.”

However, the FBI did give Trump and his campaign a defensive briefing in August 2016, as the Justice Department confirmed in an October 2017 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The briefing “focused on the broad range of threats posed by foreign intelligence agencies” and was also given to Clinton’s campaign, per the letter.

In the briefing, senior FBI officials warned Trump that foreign countries, like Russia, would try to infiltrate and spy on his campaign, according to a December 2017 NBC News report.
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/barr-report-his-baby-after-handed-over-my-decision-not-muellers

Barr Says Report Was ‘My Baby’ After Getting It: Releasing It Was My Decision

Attorney General William Barr got possessive of special counsel Robert Mueller report during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Arguing that Mueller’s work “concluded” once he handed it over to Barr’s office, Barr said the report became his “baby” at that point and he, and he alone, had the right to decide how and whether it would be released.

“Let me also say that, you know, Bob Mueller is the equivalent of a U.S. Attorney. He was exercising the powers of the attorney general, subject to the supervision of the attorney general, he’s part of the Department of Justice,” he said. “His work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general. At that point, it was my baby and I was making a decision as to whether or not make it public. I effectively overrode the regulations used discretion to lean as far forward as I could to make that public and it was my decision how and when to make it public, not Bob Mueller’s.”
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...a-good-english-word-that-doesnt-have-synonyms

Barr Defends His Use Of ‘Spying’: It’s ‘A Good English Word’

Attorney General Bill Barr on Wednesday defended his use of the word “spying” to refer to authorized activities by U.S. officials.


“I’m not going to abdure the use of the word ‘spying,’” Barr told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, when asked if had ever used it before in an official capacity. “My first job was in CIA and I don’t think the word ‘spying’ has any pejorative connotation at all.”

Barr outraged Democrats when he said in April that “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016. On Wednesday, in response to a question from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Barr said “I do have people in the department helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016.”

“To me the question is always whether or not its authorized and adequately predicated, spying,” Barr added.

He continued: “I think spying is a good English word that in fact doesn’t have synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating all forms of covert intelligence collection.”

Barr said he’s used the word “frequently, as do media.”

The attorney general said his use of the word was “off-the-cuff.”

When Whitehouse challenged Barr, saying the word was “not commonly used by the department,” the attorney general was nonchalant.

“It’s commonly used by me,” he said.
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Blumenthal's back and forth with barr about whether he briefed the wh or trump about ongoing investigations. LMAO…

raw
 
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