Attorney General William Barr stumbled when Sen. Kamala Harris asked him if anyone in the White House had asked or “suggested” he open an investigation into anyone.

Barr paused before asking the Democrat from California to repeat the question.

“Um, the president or anybody else,” Barr said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. “I’m trying to grapple with the word suggest.”

“There have been discussions of matters out there that — they have not asked me to open an investigation,” the attorney general added.

“Suggested, hinted, inferred, you don’t know,” Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, said.