Attorney general appears before a Senate panel after letter indicates dispute over characterizing special counsel probe
Mr. Barr said at the Wednesday hearing he was surprised that Mr. Mueller wouldn’t reach a conclusion about obstruction, and he said he conveyed that message to the special counsel in a March 5 briefing. Among other reasons, Mr. Mueller cited a longstanding Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. Mr. Barr said he pressed Mr. Mueller for more about his reasoning.
“If he felt he shouldn’t go down a path of making a traditional prosecutive decision then he shouldn’t have investigated,” Mr. Barr said. “That was the time to pull up.”
.. “Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching” a judgment that Mr. Trump committed crimes “when no charges can be brought,” Mr. Mueller wrote in the report. Mr. Barr subsequently determined that the evidence Mr. Mueller’s investigation developed was insufficient to establish a crime Mr. Barr said in a March 24 summary of the Mueller findings that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded the evidence gathered wasn’t enough to establish an obstruction-of-justice offense.Opening statements by the chairman and ranking member of the panel reflected the deep partisan divide that has shaped how Mr. Mueller’s report—and Mr. Barr’s characterization of it—has been received.
South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who chairs the panel, and California Democrat Dianne Feinstein focused on vastly different points in their statements.
Mr. Graham said that the president couldn’t have obstructed justice if there was no underlying crime committed by Mr. Trump’s campaign associates. Mr. Mueller’s probe didn’t establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government.
“Attempted obstruction of justice of a crime that never occurred seems to be the new standard around here, to me it doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Graham said.
Under the law, obstruction doesn’t require a successful effort. Nor does a prosecutor need to prove there was an underlying crime that a suspect was covering up.
Ms. Feinstein took an opposite tack. “Contrary to the declarations of the total and complete exoneration,” the report contained “substantial evidence of misconduct,” Ms. Feinstein said, referring to descriptions in the report that showed how the Trump campaign had welcomed, encouraged, and expected to benefit from Russia’s interference and how Mr. Trump tried to limit or influence the investigation.
In his report, Mr. Mueller cited in part Justice Department guidance as a reason he didn’t pursue obstruction charges.
A centerpiece of the hearing was the letter sent by Mr. Mueller to the attorney general on March 27. The letter, released Wednesday morning, showed that Mr. Mueller twice encouraged Mr. Barr to quickly release a fuller account of his team’s Russia investigation and expressed concerns that Mr. Barr’s early portrayals had failed to capture the nature and context of his team’s work and findings.
Graham challenges Kushner’s bid to downplay Russia interference
“You look at what Russia did, you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent . . . and it’s a terrible thing,” Kushner said last week. “But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads.”
Graham said Sunday that although “I like Jared a lot,” he’s “leaving out a big detail” — namely that the Russians hacked the emails of the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign manager and the Democratic National Committee.
“Can you imagine what we would be saying if the Russians or the Iranians hacked into the presidential team of the Republican Party?” Graham asked. “So, no — this is a big deal. It’s not just a few Facebook ads. They were very successful in pitting one American against the other during the 2016 campaign.”
Graham also argued that “an attack on one party should be an attack on all” and said he has spoken to Trump about imposing more sanctions on Moscow.
“They’re coming at us again, and I’d like to stop them, and one way to stop them is to make them pay a price,” Graham said, later adding: “The Russians are up to it again. . . . Everything we’ve done with the Russians is not working. We need more sanctions, not less.”
Trump, however, demonstrates a continued unwillingness to accept that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, even questioning his own intelligence community’s findings about Russian hacking. Multiple news outlets have reported that Trump believes such an assertion undercuts his victory.
Graham’s words, however, are unlikely to satisfy Democrats, given his insistence that there is nothing to litigate following Mueller’s report at a time when House Democrats say they will use the document as a road map for their own investigations.
One of 10 instances of possible obstruction cited in the Mueller report, which is more than 400 pages long, involved Trump allegedly calling then-White House counsel Donald McGahn and telling him to fire Mueller. House Democrats have subpoenaed McGahn, but Graham said he has no plans to do the same in the Senate.
“I don’t care what he said to Don McGahn; it’s what he did. And the president never obstructed,” Graham said. “If you’re going to look at every president who pops off at a staffer and, you know, asks them to do something that’s maybe crazy, you wouldn’t have any presidents.”
Notably, however, Mueller argued in his report that he did not feel he had the authority to determine whether Trump had obstructed justice. The special counsel seemed to defer to Congress on the matter, citing Justice Department guidelines barring a president from being charged with a crime.
What did they do with Lindsey Graham?
It isn’t unusual for politicians to tweak their language or style, to soften or toughen rhetoric as one’s audience pleases. Still, there’s something almost comical about Graham’s toughening stances and head-snapping reversals. It’s as though his body has been occupied by someone else, his inner Terminator liberated at last — in part, perhaps, because he’s no longer John McCain’s wingman. He’s Maverick now.
.. Whatever else he intends, Graham has always known how to play the media and keep himself in the headlines. This may explain his and Trump’s recent comity, which can be traced to a lunch in March 2017 when the two found common ground in, among other things, an affection for playing golf. They are also both showmen and may share some mutual respect. Both love to be center stage, and both seem to have a similar knack for giving people what they want. The president and the apprentice.
.. He is also very funny, as debate viewers will recall from his 2015 performances. His best lines from those debates were spontaneous, quick-witted and true. We delighted in his unfiltered answers to questions, such as: “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” Or, if Trump were to win, the Islamic State “would be dancing in the streets; they just don’t believe in dancing.”
.. No longer is Trump a “kook.” In 2017, Graham repeated the word but that time in taking issue with the media for “this endless attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook not fit to be president.”
.. But then Monday happened. The president turned on Maximus, rejecting Graham’s suggestion to temporarily reopen the government while the wall debate continues. The mind meld lost its connection. Do we sense a split after all Graham has done, not least his fiery attack against Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Brett M. Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, which Graham called an “unethical sham”?
Instantly, Graham became a meme sensation on the right. On the left, you’d have thought he had called Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, “bat—- crazy,” a term he previously had used to describe the GOP for its support of Trump.
As we enter 2019, the Grahamster is full of brio and bluster, ready to rush Texas with his own posthole digger. His speechwriter must surely be busy preparing text for the senator’s remarks upon the groundbreaking, perchance to include: “President Trump, build this wall!” In the meantime, as Judiciary Committee chairman, Graham has vowed that the next Supreme Court justice will be a conservative, as though anyone doubted it.
Republicans left no doubt what they think of women
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) barked at female sex-crime victims, “Grow up!” He called Christine Blasey Ford a “pleasing” witness. He shooed women away with a flick of his wrist. Hatch also posted “an uncorroborated account from a Utah man questioning the legitimacy and sexual preferences” of Julie Swetnick, one of Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers. The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board raked him over the coals:
The despicable attack launched by Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Senate Judiciary Committee — more precisely, the Republicans on that committee — on one of the women who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault is a textbook example of why more victims do not come forward.
Worse, it betrays a positively medieval attitude toward all women as sex objects who cannot be believed or taken seriously.
Not a single Republican spoke up to criticize him. One would think someone would point out that he brought dishonor on himself, his party and the Senate. But clearly Republicans take no umbrage at such conduct.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) attempted to excuse the lack of a single Republican woman — ever — on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s a lot of work — maybe they don’t want to do it.”
Kavanaugh snapped and sneered at female senators on the Judiciary Committee. Republicans didn’t bat an eye or hold it against him. He was just mad, you see.
President Trump repeated the calumny that if the attack was “as bad” as Ford said she’d have gone to the police. He declared it was a “scary time” for young men. He openly mocked Ford at a rally to gin up his base’s anger. Republican apologists said he was just explaining the facts. He actually misrepresented her testimony, falsely claiming she couldn’t recall many facts — the neighborhood of the house where she was attacked.
William Saletan called out Trump and his defenders: “It’s true that Ford can’t recall important details about place and time. It’s true that she can’t recall how she got to the house or how she left. It’s true that every accused person is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But Trump’s portrayal of Ford’s testimony wasn’t true. It was a pack of lies. And people who defend it, like Lindsey Graham, are liars too.”