The NPR Politics Podcast - Attorney General Barr Defends His Handling Of The Mueller Report To Congress

Episode Date: May 1, 2019

On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr defended his handling of the final stages of the inquiry in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that underscored how much the focus of official Washington has shifted from Russian interference in the 2016 election to the lingering aftermath of the inquiry for Republicans and Democrats. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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This podcast was recorded at... It is 5.22 p.m. on Wednesday, May 1st. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. And a big thank you to NPR for keeping me up to date on everything back home while I'm off the grid and traversing through the jungle for the next month. Enjoy the show. Wait, how off the grid can you be if you're recording podcast timestamps? I don't know. I'm just recording it. Then she had it schlepped by guide through the jungle to some place where she could send it. Wow. Whoa. What's happening?

Okay. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. A lot of serious business on Capitol Hill today. So let's all get our serious faces on as best as possible for the three of us to do. William Barr certainly had a serious face on when he sat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for hours talking about the Mueller report, his handling of the Mueller report. But, Kerry, the big news of the day happened before the hearing even began,

and that was when the Department of Justice released a letter that Robert Mueller himself had written to Barr after that initial four-page summary that Barr released. If you remember, that was the first word we had on the Mueller investigation for several weeks. So, Carrie, what did this letter say? Yeah, Mueller actually took the extraordinary step of writing a letter to the attorney general, who, remember, is supposed to be his good friend, to object to Barr's summary and basically to say it did not characterize properly the context, nature, and substance of the special counsel's work.

So I would say that Mueller seemed a little irked in the letter. Barr had a different description for it. You know, the letter's a bit snitty, and I think it was probably written by one of his staff people. OMG! Snitty! How likely is it that Bob Mueller would have a staff person write a letter of that sort, which has been described as an extremely unusual thing? People like Bob Mueller, it is said, don't go to paper.

In other words, to take the effort to actually memorialize his objections, how likely is it that he would have had some snitty staffer write it for him? Well, guess what? We have the letter now and somebody signed it and it's Bob Mueller's signature. So it doesn't really matter who wrote it. He put his name to the letter. And I got to tell you, lawyers,

this investigation has demonstrated that lawyers only write things down when they have concerns. And this demonstrates a level of concern with the Attorney General of the United States in the handling of this major league investigation. Okay, so Carrie, let me make sure I have the timeline of this all right, because there's a lot of letters involved and apparently more letters coming soon. Okay,

so we have William Barr sends his four-page letter to Congress that becomes public saying, here's what Robert Mueller found. Robert Mueller doesn't like that. He writes his own private letter to William Barr. After he sends that letter and Barr presumably reads that letter, Barr goes to Congress and says, I don't know of any concerns. Right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So March 24th, a date that will live in my brain in infamy Sunday. Remember, Barr sends this four page letter to Congress. The next day, we think that Mueller sends his own letter to Barr. And there's back and forth in correspondence. There's another letter on March 27th. And then Barr goes and testifies on April 9th, gets asked this question about basically Mueller's team being unhappy with Barr has characterized their findings, basically downplaying things, favoring the president and not

getting out all the bad information that they've uncovered. And Barr basically says, I don't know anything about that. And now he had to answer those questions today. And if there aren't enough strongly worded letters here, now Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the committee, is going to write a letter to Robert Mueller asking about the letter that Ruller wrote to Barr about Barr's letter. Except for Graham also said he considers this a closed matter. He's finished. He's had his hearing. But there's still the big fight over Mueller coming to the House, presumably, we think, in the next couple of weeks,

to talk to the House as well. Yeah, for a lot of people, they're not real interested anymore in hearing what the attorney general has to say because they have doubts about his credibility. They just want to hear what Mueller has to say. And I got to tell you, somebody who's covered him for a long time when he was running the FBI, he does not like to speak out of school.

He's not a disher. The notion that he wrote this letter to Barr in the first place and it became public is kind of a big deal. So it's not clear to me whether he's going to be a by-the-book guy and if he does testify, just read portions of the report or whether he's going to expose any additional fissures in his relationship with Barr. So, Mara, there were two big things that Democrats were really pushing Barr on. And the first is the way that he's acted since the report concluded that

initial letter without much detail. And then that extended press conference that he gave, really defending President Trump on a lot of different fronts before the report was even public. How much does it matter in the end to you politically that Barr put that four-page letter out and then we had to wait several weeks before the report came out? Because now everyone can read the report if they want to, but was there an effect that there was such a gap? You know, that's a really good question. Barr clearly wanted to use that time period. You know, he had the first crack at shaping the narrative and spinning the report. And he even had a second attempt where it was just a couple hours, actually,

before the report came out, where he was also giving another press conference. So I really wonder how much of the narrative that people have accepted comes from Barr or comes from the Mueller report and all the subsequent coverage of it. I think he took a risk, but I think he was determined to do everything he could to put forward his view. And we know that he does not believe a president can obstruct justice if he hasn't committed the underlying crime. And he's been pushing that in every way, shape and form. I don't think it's going to change public opinion in a big way, pro and con. I think the president has taken a little hit since the Mueller report came out, but there hasn't been any huge shift in public opinion. So let's talk obstruction

of justice a little bit more, because one of the big questions, and I think one of the questions that I would have, I could ask Robert Mueller a question, is that issue of why he didn't come to that determination himself. Carrie, talk about snitty, as Barr said that Mueller was. Barr sounded a little snitty at times himself when he was saying, gee, I don't know why Mueller didn't decide to make a call one way or another. Yeah, he did say, he said Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were very surprised when they met with Bob Mueller on March 5th and Mueller disclosed he was not going to make a call one way or the other. He said, Barr seemed to suggest that the special counsel's reasoning for not making an up or down call on obstruction of justice in

President Trump was confusing. He used the word confusing several times. So Barr said, somebody's got to decide this. I'm the attorney general of the United States and I'm deciding no. So then that gets to the other thing that came up a lot, and that's, you know, Barb, the decision was up to him. He said, there's no crime here. We don't find any obstruction of justice to prosecute. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota senator running for president, one of three presidential candidates asking questions today, really focused on this point, saying that, yes, you're walking through all these specific moments where you say there was no obstruction of justice, but what about the broader pattern? Okay, the report

found that after Manafort was convicted, the president himself called him a brave man for refusing to break. Yes, and that is not obstruction because the evidence, I think what the president's lawyers would say, if this were ever actually joined, is that the president's statements about flipping are quite clear and express and uniformly the same, which is by flipping, he meant succumbing to pressure on unrelated cases to lie and compose in order to get lenient treatment on other cases. So discouraging flipping in that sense is not obstruction. Okay, so that's kind of a shocking thing for veterans of the Justice Department to hear out of the mouth of the Attorney General of the United States. Defending rhetoric in the language of, I think, what the president's lawyers would say and to talk about flipping. Remember, Donald Trump has called Michael Cohen a rat. He's tried to intimidate a bunch of other people in the course of this investigation.

It was surprising to hear that kind of rhetoric out of the mouth of the attorney general. And he also did not answer questions about whether it was OK for the president to lie to the public. And, Mara, when it comes to the motives, you know, and the intent behind a lot of these actions, and again, the report details all these different instances of Trump saying things and directing people to do things. You know, Don McGahn is such a key voice in all of this. What are the odds that the White House, that President Trump, okay McGahn testifying? Well, right now they look slim. I mean, the president said we're going to fight all the subpoenas. They have refused to provide a lot of documents and witnesses that Congress has asked for,

not just in the Mueller investigation, but in a whole bunch of other investigations into White House security clearances and other issues. And that's another thing that really has gotten Democrats and Congresses back up because they feel that he's obstructing Congress, which actually was one of the impeachment articles for Richard Nixon. So it looks like you've got this giant separation of powers battle, some people would call it a constitutional crisis, with the president saying, I don't have to comply with Congress's subpoenas or requests for information. And as a matter of fact, Barr talked about McGahn today a little bit. He said, well, you know, the reason that he might not be able to testify is because he would be talking about privileged things. So we're going to talk more about that upcoming

fight after a quick break. We're also going to get into what the Republicans on the committee focused on today. Be right back. This week on Rough Translation. I found out this crazy thing. The word in French for ghostwriter is France's version of the N-word. I was like, what? That story this week on Rough Translation.

Take a listen. And we are back. And Carrie, this is the case a lot of the time, but today it was really striking that there was a real parallel hearing going on when Republicans were asking questions. What were they focusing on? Well, they want to investigate the investigators, Scott. I mean, they've been talking for a long time about whether this FISA process, this wiretapping process initiated back in 2016 was legit. They talked a lot again today about the text messages exchanged by two former FBI officials, Pete Strzok and Lisa Page. and were basically trying to paint the FBI as some

kind of partisan operation. Now, Bill Barr defended the FBI in large part, said if there were problems, they were limited to the upper echelon and there's been house cleaning. Most of those people are gone now. Mara, a lot of the Senate Republicans' points sounded suspiciously like the Twitter feed of one President Trump. Of one Donald Trump. Yes. Now, look, that is a very, as you said, this is a very common practice. The party of the president gives a little break to witnesses who are there on behalf of the president. It's kind of like there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of drama. And then as soon as your own party gets up to question you, you can relax. You saw that in the Kavanaugh hearings. That's just the way these things work. But it was striking today because the Democrats feel Bill Barr has not been truthful with them. And to me, I mean, the further that

we get from 2016, the more striking it is when the topic veers towards Hillary Clinton's private email server. That's something that Illinois Senator Dick Durbin really flagged when it was his turn to talk. I've been listening carefully to my Republican colleagues on the other side, and it appears that they are going to work together and coordinate the so-called Locker Up defense. This is really not supposed to be about the Mueller investigation, the Russian involvement in the election, the Trump campaign, and so forth. It is really about Hillary Clinton's emails. Finally, we get down to the bottom line.

Hillary Clinton's emails and questions have to be asked about Benghazi along the way. What about Travelgate, Whitewater? There's a lot of material we should be going through today according to their response to this. That is totally unresponsive to the reality of what the American people want to know. The last 23 years of my career in Washington are flashing before my eyes, starting with the 11-hour Benghazi hearing. So that was something. But, you know, there is a parallel. As Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader,

once candidly admitted on television about the Benghazi hearings, he said, look how much we've dragged down Hillary Clinton's approval ratings through the years of investigating Benghazi. That was the purpose of the Benghazi hearings. There are some Democrats who think that if they keep on investigating Donald Trump, even if they never impeach him, they can also do some political damage. Kerry, when it comes to that parallel track, you know, Lindsey Graham's the committee chairman, he said he actually is going to keep looking into this stuff. Did Barr say anything today of interest to you in terms of how seriously the DOJ treats this?

Barr is taking this very seriously, Scott. He says he's got his own team working on this. He wants to be very careful because remember, the Justice Department Inspector General has been investigating this for over a year. The IG may file his report in May or June. That would be another explosive moment that would maybe blow up back on the FBI and the DOJ. So Kerry, more broadly, when Barr came into this job, there was a lot of talk. This is an establishment guy. This is somebody who will defend law and order in the Department of Justice. And increasingly, every time he makes a public appearance,

he really seems to go out of his way to defend President Trump. Is there any talk in the legal community about whether this is just a reveal of what Barr's motives were all along or whether he shifted his approach or thinking? There's a lot of talk about this. I've been out at legal receptions and talking to lawyers and basically minding my own business and getting emails left right night, day. People are wondering what's going on with him. In fact, we had a new voice in this debate today. Jim Comey, the former FBI director, Jim Comey, did an op-ed in the New York Times saying, you have to be a really strong person or Donald Trump will eat your soul with all of the

compromises he makes you make. And Comey talks specifically about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Bill Barr. And the alternative theory is that Barr, who has always believed in a strong executive, sees this as furthering that lifelong mission. And it's not about Donald Trump corrupting him. It's about him defending the presidency, making it more powerful, less subject to oversight. Donald Trump just happens to be the guy in the office at the time. Absolutely. So, Carrie, what's the next move here?

Are we eventually going to see Robert Mueller sitting in front of a committee. As for Bob Mueller, Lindsey Graham, who's in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a Republican and an ally of the president, basically said today, Scott, it is over. He's going to send a letter, as you referenced earlier, to Mueller to see if Mueller's recollections differ significantly from Barr's. And if not, he doesn't want to hear from Bob Mueller anymore. Jerry Nadler desperately wants to hear from Bob Mueller. And Nadler says he wants to hear from him this month in May. But will Nadler send a letter?

You know, lawyer's going to lawyer. All right. And that will be the last point on this for today. But we will be back in your feed as soon as there's political news you need to know about. Until then, head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to a weekly roundup of our best online analysis. I'm Scott Tetreault. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. NPR.