On Wednesday Attorney General William Barr is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss “the Department of Justice’s Investigation of Russian Interference with the 2016 Presidential Election.”
The hearing comes almost three weeks after Barr released the redacted Special Counsel Robert Mueller Report to the public.
Prior to the release of the Mueller Report, Barr testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 10th, where he stated he believed “spying” did occur on President Trump’s campaign associates.
Shortly after his statement he clarified his statement, by changing the word “spying,” to “surveillance,” and that he was “not saying that improper surveillance,” happened, just that he was concerned about it.
Tuesday the day before Barr is set to testify, The Washington Post reported that the Special Counsel Robert Mueller “wrote a letter,” complaining to Barr, “that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work.”
After Mueller sent the letter the two exchanged a phone call that revealed, “the degree to which the longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president.”
Mueller sent his letter on March 27th, just three days after Barr published his memo that summarized the principle conclusions found in Mueller’s Report.
A Department of Justice spokeswoman told The Washington Post that, “After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” she added, “In a cordial and professional conversation, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. They then discussed whether additional context from the report would be helpful and could be quickly released. However, the Attorney General ultimately determined that it would not be productive to release the report in piecemeal fashion,”
As the News Blender reported early April some of Mueller’s team was unhappy with Barr’s characterization of Mueller’s findings.
Late Tuesday the DOJ released Barr’s opening statement for Wednesday’s Senate Hearing.
Thursday Barr is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, as the News Blender reported Barr is threatening not to testify, because he objections to the questioning format proposed by Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). As it stands, committee members have said they plan to hold the hearing whether Barr shows up or not.
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