Associated Press/Alex Brandon
Attorney General nominee William Barr departs after a meeting with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019 in Washington.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Attorney General William Barr as biased and called for special counsel Robert Mueller's report to be released in full.
- On Sunday evening, Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller's findings regarding election interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice committed by President Donald Trump.
- Pelosi and Schumer wrote that Barr's summary "raises as many questions as it answers" and charged that Barr "is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Attorney General William Barr as biased and called for special counsel Robert Mueller's full report to be released to Congress in a Sunday joint statement.
On Sunday evening, Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller's findings regarding election interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice committed by President Donald Trump
"Attorney General Barr's letter raises as many questions as it answers," they wrote. "The fact that Special Counsel Mueller's report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay."
Barr's summary said that while Mueller did not "draw a conclusion - one way or the other - as to whether the examined conduct constitutes obstruction," Mueller's report "also does not exonerate" Trump of any criminal conduct.
Barr continued that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - who oversaw the Mueller probe for most of its duration - concluded that the special counsel's findings were "not sufficient" to determine that Trump committed obstruction of justice.
"Given Mr. Barr's public record of bias against the Special Counsel's inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report," Schumer and Pelosi charged in their statement.
Barr is coming under scrutiny from Democrats in Congress for his and Rosenstein's conclusion that Trump did not commit obstruction of justice in light of a memo he wrote before his appointment as Attorney General questioning the legality of Mueller's obstruction probe.
In the unsolicited 20-page memo he sent to the Department of Justice, Barr criticized special counsel Robert Mueller probe's line of investigation into possible obstruction of justice and witness tampering by Trump.
The memo called Mueller's inquiry into whether Trump obstructed justice when he fired former FBI director James Comey in the spring of 2017 "legally unsupportable" and "potentially disastrous."