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.