William Barr: 'Terrified' attorney general will not testify before House panel probing Russia report, says top Democrat

Stand off is latest tussle between Trump administraton and Democrats

Attorney general William Barr will not testify before a House committee probing the handling of the Mueller report, a senior Democrat has claimed, accusing him of being “terrified”.

In the latest twist to the feud between the Trump administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill seeking to force officials to testify, Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler said Mr Barr would not appear before his committee.

Mr Barr had been due to testify before the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee on Thursday, following his testy appearance before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, where the attorney general clashed with Democrats as he defended his handling of the publication of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe report.

But barely an hour after Mr Barr had completed testifying before senators, Mr Nadler held a press conference to reveal there would be no subsequent appearance on Thursday. The attorney general had declined to appear after Democrats insisted he be questioned not just by senators but by committee lawyers.

“He’s trying to blackmail the committee,” declared Mr Nadler. “The administration cannot dictate the terms of our hearing in our hearing room.”

Mr Nadler, who also said the department of justice had informed his committee it would not comply with its subpoena for the full, unredacted report from the special counsel, did not rule out issuing another subpoena to try and force Mr Barr to appear on Thursday. He said he hoped Mr Barr would reconsider his position overnight.

The department of justice confirmed Mr Barr would not appear and claimed Mr Nadler had put “unprecedented and unnecessary” conditions about his testimony.

“Congress and the executive branch are co-equal branches of government, and each have a constitutional obligation to respect and accommodate one another’s legitimate interests,” said department spokesperson Kerri Kupec.

The decision by Mr Barr is just the latest tussle between the White House and Democrats, who now control the House. While Democrats, disappointed that Mr Mueller’s report did not include a smoking gun to bring down the president, are determined to question under oath his top officials, Mr Trump is determined to try and ensure they do not.

“There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress, where it’s very partisan – obviously very partisan,” Mr Trump recently told the Washington Post. “I don’t want people testifying to a party, because that is what they’re doing if they do this.”

The appearance of Mr Barr came shortly after the emergence of a letter from Mr Mueller, sent to the attorney general, in which he outlined complaints about the four-page summary that had been presented to Congress about his report.

“The summary letter the department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mr Mueller wrote.

In his summary, Mr Barr said that while Mr Mueller had found no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, he had not reached a decision about the claims of obstruction of justice.

When a redacted version of the report was subsequently released, it emerge that Mr Mueller had uncovered numerous connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. Mr Mueller also wrote “while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him”.

Mr Barr, during his testimony, stood by his determination not to charge Mr Trump for obstruction — arguing that, since there was no collusion or conspiracy, that the president could not have obstructed justice by firing former FBI director James Comey and then repeatedly attempt to get others to fire Mr Mueller.

Pushed on whether it was appropriate for Mr Trump to lie to the American people about contacts between his campaign and Russians, about his intentions with regards to Mr Mueller’s employment as special counsel, and other questionable instances surfaced by the report, Mr Barr said that his job is not to determine who was behaving well or not.

“I’m not in the business of determining wether lies were told to the American people,” Mr Barr said.“I’m in the business of determining whether crimes were committed.”

Mr Nadler also revealed he hoped Mr Mueller would himself testify on May 15.