Congress Barr: Mueller turned down offer to review Russia probe findings The attorney general also says he'll release a redacted version of the special counsel's report 'within a week.'

Attorney General William Barr rebuffed Democrats’ demands that he turn over special counsel Robert Mueller's full report and all its underlying evidence to Congress, telling lawmakers on Tuesday that he’ll release a redacted version of the report “within a week.”

In his first public appearance since the conclusion of Mueller’s 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed that probe, Barr defended his handling of the report against attacks from Democrats, who panned his four-page summary as an effort to protect Trump from damaging information contained within the report.


The attorney general also said lawmakers had no inherent authority to review Mueller’s sensitive grand jury evidence, adding that he does not intend to ask a court to authorize the release of grand jury evidence to Congress.

“My intention is not to ask for it at this stage,” he said, adding that he doesn’t believe Congress is exempt from grand jury secrecy rules under the law.

Democrats have called on Barr to make the full report, including all the grand jury material and underlying evidence gathered as part of the investigation, available to Congress. Barr on Tuesday said the House Judiciary Committee could ask a court for the grand jury information — something Democrats have not yet embraced.

Barr called the version he intends to release in the coming days a “first pass” and said he’ll work with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and his Senate counterpart, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), if they want to view some of the redacted areas of the report.

Nadler fired back at Barr later Tuesday, saying it was “unfortunate” that he and Barr were unable to “reach an accommodation” that would allow Congress to view the full report.

“I suppose my conclusion is that he regards his job as working as an attorney for the president personally, not for the government,” Nadler told reporters.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee authorized Nadler to issue a subpoena for the full Mueller report. Nadler has said he expects to use the subpoena in the coming days under the expectation that Barr will not provide the committee with enough information, but he wouldn’t commit to issuing it immediately on Tuesday.

During his testimony — which was ostensibly focused on the Justice Department’s budget — Barr said he was working with Mueller to identify sensitive information that should be redacted — including grand jury evidence, classified material and information relevant to ongoing investigations — before he submits the report. He said the process was “going along very well” and that he would explain using a color-coded system why each redaction was made.

“I do think it’s important that the public have an opportunity to learn the results of the special counsel’s work,” Barr said, noting that the special counsel regulations, as written, do not require him to make the report public.

Barr's testimony took on added urgency in light of recent news reports that members of Mueller’s team were frustrated with the attorney general’s summary, claiming it doesn’t accurately represent their investigation.

Barr acknowledged those frustrations, telling Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.): “I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.”

The attorney general said he gave Mueller and his prosecutors an opportunity to review his four-page summary of the report before it was released to the public last month. Barr said Mueller declined to review it in advance.

Under subsequent questioning from Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), Barr mused hypothetically about a leak of the report from Mueller’s team to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee — but he called such a prospect unlikely.

“I doubt that would happen,” he said.

Barr bristled when he was pressed for additional details by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.). Asked whether the White House had been briefed on any aspect of the report, Barr said: “I’ve said what I’m going to say about the report today.”

“I’ve already laid out the process going forward to release these reports hopefully within a week,” he said. “I’m not going to say anything more about it until the report is out.”

Barr is slated to testify before the House and Senate judiciary panels in early May about his handling of the Mueller report.

In the four-page summary he issued last month, Barr wrote that Mueller “did not establish” that the Trump campaign conspired with Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Though Barr noted that Mueller made no decision on whether to charge Trump with obstructing the investigation, the attorney general, in his four-page memo, revealed his own decision to absolve Trump of any allegations of obstruction, prompting howls from Democrats that the move was an effort to whitewash damaging information Mueller might have uncovered about the president.

Democrats leaned heavily into Barr’s decision-making process in crafting the summary.

Lowey, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, used her opening statement to home in on what she called Barr’s “unacceptable handling” of the report.

“All we have is your four-page summary letter, which seems to cherry pick from the report to draw the most favorable conclusion possible for the president,” Lowey said.

Barr also addressed a GOP-led effort to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation, which Mueller later inherited.

Republicans have long claimed that the FBI relied on Clinton campaign opposition research to win approval of a surveillance warrant on a former adviser to Trump’s campaign. The FBI has rejected that assertion, noting that a controversial dossier — shared with the FBI by a former British spy who had been retained by a firm hired by the Clinton campaign — was just one piece of evidence used to obtain the warrant and that it had mentioned his bias in the application.

Barr referenced an ongoing inspector-general investigation into the surveillance effort that could be finished by May or June. He also said he was wraping his arms around the controversy and that he’s awaiting criminal referrals from the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes of California, who said Sunday that he intends to pass along eight such referrals to the Justice Department.

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also plans to launch his own probe that will center on the possibility of anti-Trump bias at the Justice Department and the FBI.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Republicans lamented that Democrats were focusing on the Mueller report instead of the Justice Department’s budget request.

“I see so many of the questions here this morning have gone toward a grassy-knoll conspiracy theory regarding with the Mueller report,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama, the top Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this story.

