‘The attorney general was not telling the truth to Congress’ with his summary of the Trump-Russia report, the House speaker said

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Thursday that the US attorney general, William Barr, committed a “crime” when he told lawmakers during a congressional hearing last month that he was unaware that special counsel Robert Mueller was unhappy with his portrayal of the findings from his investigation into Russian meddling.

“What’s deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi said on Thursday morning during her weekly press conference with reporters. “And that’s a crime.”

Pelosi’s comments came amid an escalating battle between the executive and congressional branches of the US government, as Democrats threatened to hold Barr in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear before the House judiciary committee earlier on Thursday morning.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, Kerri Kupec, called Pelosi’s comments “baseless”.

“Speaker Pelosi’s baseless attack on the attorney general is reckless, irresponsible and false,” she said.

The justice department has also refused to comply with a congressional subpoena requesting an unredacted version of Mueller’s report, made public in redacted form last month, and the underlying source material that helped the special counsel reach its findings.

Mueller first submitted the report to the attorney general last month and Barr subsequently released a summary of its findings, which concluded that there was insufficient evidence to convict Donald Trump or his campaign of conspiracy with Russia, but failed to reach a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.

The House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, said he would continue to negotiate with the justice department for “one or two more days” to comply with the subpoena before initiating the process to hold Barr in contempt of Congress.

In a press conference on Thursday, Nadler said Barr’s absence represented a “growing attack on American democracy” and that Congress must “do all we can in the name of the American people to ensure that when the Trump administration ends we have as robust a democracy to hand to our children as was handed to us”.

Some Democratic lawmakers and 2020 presidential election contenders are demanding Barr’s resignation over criticism that he is acting as Donald Trump’s personal attorney and not in the best interest of the country as a whole. During a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Barr defended his handling and release of Mueller’s report, despite a complaint from the special counsel by letter that the attorney general’s initial summary of his findings caused “public confusion”.

Nadler pressed ahead with the hearing on Thursday morning, emphasizing the empty witness chair with a placard for Barr. One member of the committee brought fried chicken, a gimmick to make the point that Democrats believe Barr was a “chicken” for not appearing.

“The challenge we face is also bigger than the Mueller report. If all we knew about President Trump were contained in the four corners of that report, there would be good reason to question his fitness for office,” Nadler said. “But the report is not where the story ends.”

Barr refused to appear before the House judiciary committee on Thursday because of an unresolved dispute over the Democrat’s decision to allow a staff counsel to question him in addition to members.

Ranking member Doug Collins, a Republican of Georgia, called the Democrats’ demands “ludicrous” and assailed them for perpetrating a “circus” and a “political stunt”.

“The reason Bill Barr is not here today is because the Democrats decided they did not want him here today,” Collins said.