US Attorney General William Barr is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee today.
He will answer questions about a range of contentious topics, including federal forces in Portland, the president’s response to protests and Barr’s defense of the president’s “law and order” vision for the US.
Many critics of the president think that Barr acts more as Trump’s personal attorney than as the United States Attorney General.
Barr’s opening statement, which was released Monday night, is largely a defense of the president’s recent conduct. He paints a picture of a country gripped by anarchist chaos and in dire need of a steady, authoritarian hand.
However, testifying before a Democratic-controlled committee, Barr is far from friendly ground. Democrats largely believe Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric is fear-mongering that isn’t based in reality.
Barr will also answer questions regarding the Mueller report. One of Barr’s defining moments as AG came when he mischaracterized Mueller’s findings in his public disclosure of the investigation.
House Democrats want to ask Barr questions about the way he handled the Russia report by the special counsel, Robert Mueller for more than a year.
Barr said that the investigation was a “total exoneration” of Trump, which it definitively was not. This raised alarms for Congressional Democrats, many of whom accused Barr of covering for Trump.
According to the New York Times, a federal judge has said that because Barr summarized the report himself long before the public saw it, Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account that painted too nice a picture of Trump.
Democrats felt that this misled the public and protected Trump from that impeachment. Barr denies these claims.
Democrats believed Barr’s actions and rhetoric undercut the investigation’s actual findings. Files found in cloud storage services indicated that Russian hackers had distributed stolen emails widely before the 2016 election.
Moreover, Barr has bent to the president’s will on multiple cases. Remember Roger Stone, a friend and political ally of Trump’s? Trump insisted his case be dropped, and Barr helped that happen.
Trump claimed Stone received “unfair” treatment by the FBI for weeks. Finally, Barr and other top Justice Department officials moved to drop Stone’s case.
However, Stone’s criminal charges were cut and dry. He had pled guilty to lying to Congress during the 2017 investigations. He received a sentence of 40 months in prison, which Trump would go on to pardon.
To outside observers, Barr and Trump appear to be working to undermine the justice system.
