Tag: William Barr

After Disclosure Of Mueller Letter, Demands For Barr Resignation Mount

Attorney General Bill Barr frustrated Special Counsel Robert Mueller with his misleading portrayal of the Russia investigation’s final report in March, the Washington Post revealed Tuesday and the Justice Department confirmed. Mueller wrote a letter to Barr saying that his summary of the report he sent to Congress “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” the Post reported.

Many reporters and observers had argued from the beginning that Barr’s letter was likely purposely deceitful. Now that it’s been revealed that the notoriously taciturn Mueller objected to the attorney general’s portrayal, Barr is facing increasing calls for his resignation.

“Attorney General Barr willfully misled the American people to cover up attempted crimes by Donald Trump. He should resign his position or face an impeachment inquiry immediately,” said Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro.

View the complete April 30 article by Cody Fenwick with AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Mueller expressed ‘frustration’ to Barr over lack of context in letter

A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller expressed “frustration” to Attorney General William Barr in late March over the lack of context in the attorney general’s four-page memo describing his investigation’s findings.

Mueller “expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage” of his obstruction inquiry in a phone call following the release of Barr’s four-page letter, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement to The Hill.

Kupec said Barr called Mueller after receiving a letter in which, according to The Washington Post, the special counsel wrote that Barr’s March 24 memo did not “capture the context, nature, and substance” of his findings.

View the complete April 30 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Barr Threatens Not to Testify Before House, but Democrats May Subpoena Him

WASHINGTON — The powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened on Sunday to subpoena Attorney General William P. Barr if Mr. Barr refuses to testify this week, a move that could lead to a major escalation of the long-running feud between the White House and congressional Democrats over testimony and access to documents.

The threat by the chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, came on the eve of Democrats’ return to Washington after a two-week congressional recess that has been dominated by questions about the special counsel’s report. Mr. Barr is scheduled to come before Mr. Nadler’s committee on Thursday to testify about it.

But Mr. Barr and Democrats are at loggerheads over the Democrats’ proposed format for questioning him, and now the much-anticipated hearing is in doubt. The dispute spilled out into the open on Sunday when Democrats revealed that Mr. Barr was threatening to skip the session if they did not change their terms. Mr. Nadler said they have no intention of doing so.

View the complete April 28 article by Shertl Gay Stolberg on the The New Times website here.

Barr to testify before Senate panel next week on Mueller report

Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to testify next Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation.

Barr, who released a redacted version of Mueller’s report on Russian interference last week, is slated to appear before the committee on May 1 at 10 a.m.

The appearance will give lawmakers an opportunity to grill Barr on Mueller’s findings as well as his handling of the special counsel’s final report. The attorney general is also expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee the following day.

View the complete April 24 article by Morgan Chalfant and Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.

The Mueller report: A profile of a president willing to sell out his country

It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office.

When Attorney General William Barr provided a brief, four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on March 22, it was obvious there were more questions remaining than answers. The full report was rumored to have clocked in at well over three hundred pages and Barr’s summary left much to be desired as to just what Mueller had uncovered. The message that Donald Trump would not be charged with offenses directly relating to Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and that the Department of Justice had decided not to file charges of obstruction of justice, was met by celebration with some and puzzlement by others.

Having finally had a chance to look at an initial, redacted version of the report, Americans got a chance last Thursday to see for themselves just what horrors Attorney General Barr had been trying to bury for his president. In Mueller’s 448-page detailed narrative of his investigation, we saw the story of a campaign deeply steeped in Russian efforts to undermine our free and fair elections and a president attempting to or actively breaking the law to cover it up.

Continue reading “The Mueller report: A profile of a president willing to sell out his country”

How a legal dispute between Mueller and Barr drove the end of the special counsel’s probe

For nearly two years, the public, Congress and the White House waited to learn if special counsel Robert S. Mueller III would find that President Trump had committed crimes. When the answer was finally revealed, it turned out Mueller didn’t think that was his job at all.

The special counsel ended his investigation last month, pointedly choosing not to reach a conclusion about whether the president had obstructed justice.

In a report of its findings, Mueller’s team said that choice was driven in large part by a long-standing legal opinion at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that a sitting president should not be indicted, even if the charges remained sealed.

View the complete April 20 article by Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats renew attacks on Trump attorney general

Democrats ripped into Attorney General William Barr on Friday, signaling he’ll be a focal point of their attacks on the Trump administration in the post-Mueller report world.

The Democrats say Barr bungled the handling of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report and that he has repeatedly sought to protect President Trump, contrasting his comments about what the report said with the actual text that was released on Thursday.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) issued a subpoena on Friday to win the release of the full report, while other Democrats have called for Barr’s resignation.

View the complete April 20 article by Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Trump lawyers reviewed Mueller report for 10 hours before it was made public

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers spent at least 10 hours reviewing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election before it was made public, two of the lawyers told Reuters on Friday.

Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow and two other Trump lawyers went to the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday and Wednesday for an early look at the 448-page report into whether Trump’s team colluded with Russia and whether Trump obstructed the investigation, which was released to the public on Thursday.

Attorney General William Barr, who has drawn criticism from Democratic lawmakers over his handling of the Mueller probe, said on Thursday that both White House counsel and Trump’s personal lawyers had been allowed to review the redacted report.

View the complete April 19 article by Karen Freifeld on the Reuters website here.

Trump feared ‘one of these independent counsels.’ He got something else

Amid Democrats’ criticism, is Barr trying to protect Trump or the office he occupies?

Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, ended a phone call and returned to the Oval Office. It wasn’t long before President Donald Trump was in an angry rage.

Sessions, since unceremoniously fired, had just taken a phone call from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who informed him he had appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III as a special counsel to look into Russia’s 2016 election meddling, including whether there was coordination with Trump’s campaign.

It fell to Sessions to inform the president.

View the complete April 19 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Top Takeaways From the Mueller Report

A redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report has been released, detailing the special counsel’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 election and instances of possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump.

Here are the top initial takeaways from the 448-page report summarizing the Russia investigation and Attorney General William Barr’s press conference.

Mueller Found Many Cases of Possible Obstruction

Mueller said he found at least 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump. The episodes included his firing of FBI Director James Comey and actions to protect former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

View the complete April 18 article by Steven T. Dennis, Chris Strohm and David McLaughlin on the Bloomberg News website here.