Robert Mueller wrote that Attorney General William Barr’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo mueller investigation The Barr-Mueller breakup: AG works to discredit special counsel The attorney general took shots at Mueller after it was revealed Mueller twice pushed Barr to release Russia probe summaries

Attorney General William Barr spent five hours Wednesday attempting to lay waste to the central findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's 22-month investigation, taking cutting — sometimes personal — swipes at the man he once described as a friend and cementing his alliance with President Donald Trump.

Under questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr questioned Mueller's decision to investigate Trump for obstruction of justice — an endeavor that made up half of Mueller's 448-page report — undercut the legal theories Mueller used in that effort, contradicted Mueller's explanation of why he didn't charge Trump with a crime and even mocked Mueller's recently revealed criticism of him as "snitty."


The hearing revealed a deepening fissure between the two Justice Department veterans, one that featured Barr's expansive view of presidential authority to meddle in investigations.

"If, in fact, a proceeding was not well-founded, if it was a groundless proceeding or based on false allegations, the president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course," Barr told lawmakers. "The president could terminate the proceeding and it would not be a corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused."

Barr's commentary framed the debate on Capitol Hill over Mueller's recently released report on links between the Trump campaign and Russians interfering in the 2016 presidential election as well as whether Trump attempted to obstruct the probe. Mueller concluded that he lacked sufficient evidence to charge any American with conspiring with Russia but that he had substantial evidence that Trump attempted to thwart the investigation. He indicated, though, that Justice Department rules prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president precluded him from making a decision on obstruction — because Trump would not be able to clear his name in court.

Barr's testimony came just hours after it was revealed that Mueller had twice raised concerns to Barr about the handling of his report, warning that Barr's decision to characterize his conclusions in a four-page letter in March — without releasing more of his findings — had led to broad misunderstandings of his team's work. Mueller twice pressed Barr to speed the release of his report's summaries and introductions to Congress and the public, but Barr declined, instead waiting nearly a month to issue a fuller version of Mueller's report.

In his testimony Wednesday, Barr offered his most direct criticisms of the Mueller probe to date, suggesting he wasn't sure why the special counsel investigated numerous instances of potential obstruction of justice if he decided he couldn't charge Trump with a crime under Justice Department restrictions.

“The other thing that was confusing to me was that the investigation carried on for a while as additional episodes [of obstruction] were looked into,” Barr said. “The question is, or was: Why were those investigated at the end of the day, if you weren’t going to reach a decision?”

In his report, Mueller emphasized that he investigated those episodes because of the possibilities that a president could be charged after leaving office and that subordinates could have aided alleged obstruction efforts.

“While the [DOJ] opinion concludes that a sitting president may not be prosecuted, it recognizes that a criminal investigation during the president’s term is permissible,” Mueller wrote. “The ... opinion also recognizes that a president does not have immunity after he leaves office.”

At times, Barr engaged in tense arguments with Democrats who accused him of “purposefully misleading” Congress in previous testimony. Sen. Kamala Harris of California at one point appeared to trip up Barr when she asked whether the president or any White House official had asked or suggested the attorney general open an investigation into anyone.

Some Democrats even called for the attorney general to resign, including Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who drew a rebuke from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the panel.

“I gave you seven minutes, and you slandered this man from top to bottom,” Graham said.

Barr declined to testify before the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee amid a fight over the format of its Thursday hearing.

Barr also said that if Mueller had found enough evidence to charge the president with obstruction, he would have said so in his report.

“If [Mueller] had found enough evidence for an obstruction charge, I think he would state it,” Barr said.

But Barr's answers directly contradict the rationale Mueller laid out in his report. Mueller indicated in a legal analysis of obstruction of justice that “fairness” dictated he not reach a formal judgment on whether the president obstructed justice — regardless of the evidence.

Barr took another shot at Mueller when he said the Justice Department was “not in the business of exonerating.” It was a veiled reference to the obstruction section of Mueller’s report, which stated: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Barr included that sentence in his four-page summary. Barr also called that aspect of Mueller's findings unclear and said he couldn't "recapitulate" Mueller's rationale for including it.

Later in the hearing, Barr appeared to doubt whether the Trump campaign sought to benefit from information that was stolen by a foreign power. But Mueller wrote in his report that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally” from such information. Barr also pushed back on Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) when he said the campaign shared information with a “foreign adversary,” a reference to former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian with suspected ties to Russian intelligence.

Barr also undermined another central Mueller theory: That Trump's public tweets and comments could be evidence of obstruction, such as when Trump made ominous comments about possible crimes by family members of his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen — an exchange Mueller considered possible obstruction.

"I don't think that that could pass muster, those public statements he was making could pass muster," Barr said in response to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

But in his report, Mueller described in detail why he considered Trump's tweets to be evidence of obstruction. No "principle of law excludes public acts from the scope of obstruction statutes. If the likely effect of the acts is to intimidate witnesses or alter their testimony, the justice system's integrity is equally threatened," he said.

Barr's comments came after House lawmakers Wednesday morning released Mueller’s March 27 letter asking Barr to release the report’s summaries and introductions publicly, warning "public misunderstandings" threatened to undermine confidence in the Russia probe.

In the letter, Mueller revealed that he had pressed Barr to make elements of his report public on March 25 — a day after Mueller finalized his report — and urged Barr to do so again. But Barr kept the report secret for nearly a month, reviewing it for several categories of information to redact — and he made no indication to Congress or the public that Mueller disagreed with his handling of the report.

The letter was made public just as Barr arrived on Capitol Hill to testify on Mueller's findings amid a barrage of criticism about his decision to publicly characterize the findings of Mueller's 22-month probe before making it public and to do so in a way that Mueller felt contributed to public misunderstanding.

Mueller wrote his letter just three days after Barr made public a four-page summary of his “principal conclusions” from Mueller’s report — and the special counsel expressed concern that Barr’s memo sowed “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”

Mueller also wrote that Barr’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation, which centered on links between Trump’s campaign and Russia, as well as whether the president obstructed the probe.

Barr called the letter “a bit snitty” and suggested that one of Mueller’s deputies wrote it.

Democrats confronted Barr about the letter, which appeared to contradict Barr’s past congressional testimony in which he said he was unaware of any concerns expressed by Mueller’s team about his four-page summary. In response, Barr said there was a difference between concerns expressed by Mueller’s prosecutors and those conveyed by the special counsel himself.

“It defies common sense,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said outside the hearing room. “He knew there were problems with it, and he was dodging.”

Barr also defended his remarks to lawmakers last month about alleged “spying” on the Trump campaign during the 2016 campaign — a reference to a surveillance warrant approved for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The attorney general said he wouldn’t “back off” his characterization, saying the word “spying” does not have a “pejorative connotation.” When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said the word is “not commonly used” by the Justice Department, Barr responded: “It’s commonly used by me.”

Mueller’s letter added fuel to Democrats’ allegations that Barr was spinning the results of the Mueller investigation in a favorable light for Trump. Democrats have also charged that Barr misled the public about Mueller’s findings on obstruction of justice — in particular, Mueller’s citation of a longstanding Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president.

In his opening statement to the Senate, Barr defended his handling of the investigation, specifically his decision not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice despite the evidence Mueller presented.

Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein disagreed with some of Mueller’s legal theories and that he believes that some of Trump’s efforts to influence the investigation “did not amount to obstruction as a matter of law.” But he said he accepted Mueller’s legal framework and concluded that the evidence was “not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

The news of Mueller’s letter echoing some Democrats' concerns has led them to demand expedited public testimony from the special counsel — a senior House Democratic aide said they hope to hear from him by next week, though they initially had sought his testimony by May 23.

Graham also indicated after Barr's testimony that he may not call Mueller at all but will offer him a chance to respond to anything Barr said during Wednesday's hearing.

Josh Gerstein, Darren Samuelsohn and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

