As William Barr’s confirmation hearing approaches, Republicans are working overtime to reassure Democrats that Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general will not tamper with Robert Mueller’s investigation, despite having criticized it in the past. “Based on what I heard, he has a high opinion of Mr. Mueller, believes Mr. Mueller is doing a professional job, will do a professional job, and be fair to the president and the country as a whole,” Lindsey Graham, one of the president’s most ardent allies on Capitol Hill and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters after meeting with Barr on Wednesday. Democrats, however, aren’t convinced. On Wednesday, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, raised concerns about Barr after she said the nominee denied her and Senator Richard Blumenthal, another Judiciary Committee Democrat, a meeting due to the government shutdown—despite having met with Graham, John Cornyn, and Chuck Grassley that same day.

“I tried (as did Blumenthal) to get meeting w/AG nominee Barr and was told he couldn’t meet until AFTER the hearing,” Klobuchar tweeted late Wednesday. “The reason given? The shutdown. Yet shutdown didn’t stop him from other mtgs. This is a 1st for me w/any nominee as a member of judiciary.”

Barr’s election not to meet with Democrats could indeed be a #BadSign. If confirmed, he would have the authority to decide the fate of Mueller’s final report on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, along with potential obstruction of justice on the part of the president. Barr’s past comments have already sparked fears that he may be in line with Trump on the Russia investigation, and could seek to block the special counsel’s highly anticipated report from the public: he has described Mueller’s team—as the president does—as politically biased, and has likewise been critical of the special counsel’s obstruction inquiry. He had also previously defended Trump’s calls to investigate Hillary Clinton, telling The New York Times in 2017 that there was more basis to scrutinize her over the Uranium One conspiracy than there is to scrutinize Trump’s connections to Russia.

As my colleague Abigail Tracy reported earlier this week, some believe that Barr would attempt to provide cover for Trump when the Mueller report drops. “It is hard to believe that Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker or William Barr would do the right thing and put the American people first,” former deputy assistant attorney general Elliot Williams told her. “Or put another way, [that they] would do anything other than attempt to protect the president of the United States at whatever cost.”