Barr Defends Handling of Mueller Report

Barr is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He's been defending his handling up Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings following the release of a letter dated March from Mueller to Bar objecting to the Attorney General's misrepresentation of his report. Bar testified that the reason he had to take three weeks to release a redacted report was because Mueller sent

him a report without that grand jury material redacted. Unfortunately, it did not come in that form, and it UH quickly became a parent that it would take about three or four weeks UH to identify that material and other material let have to be redacted. Bar um that contradicts the statement Mueller made in his letter to Bar. Joining me is Andrew Kent, professor at Fordham Law School. Andrew, let's start with that question of whether or not Mueller

had redacted the grand jury material. Is it going to come down to calling Mueller to testify in order to judge his credibility versus that of Bars? I think it seems inevitable that Muller will be called to testify. There are so many questions, and certainly among them are the ones that you point to now, Ju, and so I do expect that we will hear from him. How, in your opinion, did bar do in rebutting the criticism that his summary and press conference misrepresented Mueller's report? You know,

my judgment, not so well. I think he had a lot of serious questions to respond to, and his answers, for the most part, we're come narrow, loyally parsing um, you're kind of really fine grained, sort of hair splitting that um, to my mind, really didn't answer the many legitimate questions that have been raised about how he had handled both his transmission of the report and his public

statements about the report. What struck me was his answer to a question about why he concluded there was no obstruction. He said there was no underlying crime, but Muller in his report disagreed with that, and legal experts disagree with that as well. What's your take. I agree with everyone

except Borrow on this. There are obstruction cases on the books where courts have upheld uh, somebody who had motives of embarrassment or shielding a friend from from justice, or or other kinds of other kinds of motives for obstructing justice other than um, you know, shielding themselves from criminal activity. So Bar does seem to have an unduly narrow reading of the obstruction statutes. Let's talk about some of the specifics of bars representation of the Mueller Report that Congressman

called him on. They focused a little on Don McGann because because of his presence, in fact, he in the second part of the report, he is one of the the leading players, you might say. And Bar argued today that the President never used the specific word fire and so he wasn't trying to fire him because he wanted to cover up the what was happening with the Muller. What was your take on that. I found that to

be one of the more confounding aspects of the testimony today. Um, you know, Senator Feinstein, I thought that a pretty effective job. I mean, Bar seemed to be saying that it wasn't

you know, the word fire wasn't used. And um, Trump may have thought, or you know, Bar seemed to think that Trump did believe that there were conflicts of interest that Mueller had, and therefore Bar seems to be saying that Trump merely wanted, you know, a special counsel to be removed, not but not fired, whatever that distinction is. But the fact is, as as Mueller found, the claims about a suppose it's a conflict of interest are just

beyond silly, I mean, entirely specious. And Muller reports that White House officials told Trump that there was no obstruction of justice at all. Excuse me, no, no conflict of interest by Mueller at all. And therefore it's quite hard to understand why why Borrow would assume presidential good faith in this instance. I really did not understand his answers

and found them pretty unconvincing. Does this bring out the point that the House is trying to make the House wants to have some lawyers, some committee lawyers, question Bar tomorrow in a thirty minute session, and is it because what happens here? You have a five minute session by you know, mostly non lawyers in a cross examination kind of setting, but they never really get to their point in those five minutes, they can't follow up enough. Yeah, I think that's a exactly why the House wants to

change the format somewhat. It is very difficult for individual members, who, as you say, only have five minutes each broken up by the other party, having their chance to really develop

a line of question. Really, um, really press somebody. And I think um Barr is aware that the questioning of him would be a lot more effective if it was done in the way that the House Judiciary Committee wants to So he um, you know, as as as you indicate, you know he's objecting to that, and as my understanding is so far as said, he's not going to show up if he's going to be counseled questioned by by

a lawyer instead of by the members themselves. It would be refreshing to me if a witness at some point I said I was wrong, I shouldn't have used that word. Yet Bar went through a long explanation of why he used the words spying and saying it doesn't have you know, derogatory meanings to most people, which I think is on its face wrong. I agree with you. I thought he could have just said I was speaking quickly. You know,

in retrospect, I would have used a different language. I mean, because, after all, in context, what he was talking about was court authorized, you know, legally authorized surveillance after the government had met a very substantial burden of of showing a judge that there was reason to believe that Carter Page uh might be an agent of a foreign power. And to call that with such a colloquial and and sort of negative terms spying, you know, is I think really inappropriate.

I mean, for one thing, the Attorney General is one of the you know, one of the officials in our government who is himself is authorized to approve these warrants for surveillance and appropriate circumstances. And you know, I don't think that he should be suggesting that it's you know, somehow you know, inappropriate or improper by by using a word like that. I that that was something where I absolutely agree he should have clarified and walked back some

of the dismissive tone that he used. Only about a minute here what so far what stands out to you this half day of testimony. You know, one of the things that I also was quite surprised that he was sticking with was when he had said in his press conference previously that the president had fully cooperated with the investigation.

Some of the senators, like Senator lay He were pressing him on that and saying, you know, um, you know, the president refused to you know, sit for questioning the president, Uh, you know, pressured Manafort not to cooperate with the special counsel. You know, how can you know, Mr bar say that this is full cooperation And Barr really stuck to his guns, which again I think is quite surprising and and sort

of hard to believe. Um. And you know, the other thing was just that you know, we're now, you know, how many years removed from the summer of sixteen, you know, almost three years and there, Andrew, But there'll be more hearings to come for sure, and more testimony. Thank you so much. That's Andrew Kent. He's a professor at Fordham Law School. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg m