Attorney General Bill Barr told lawmakers Tuesday he was ‘reviewing’ the conduct of the FBI at the start of the Russia probe – an investigation that powerful Republicans including President Trump have demanded.

Barr provided the information during testimony where he also revealed he will make public a redacted version of the Mueller report within a week.

‘I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,’ Barr said at a subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

Barr revealed his top-level review under questioning by top Appropriations subpanel Republican Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama.

Although such referrals do not have the power to force an investigation, Nunes said they pertained to ‘alleged misconduct during the Russia investigation including the leak of classified material and alleged conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court in order to spy on then-candidate Trump and other persons.’

Aderholt told DailyMail.com that he had not had any additional back-channel conversations with the Justice Department to confirm the extent of the review Barr is conducting.

‘I got the impression that [the matter] was on his radar screen that he was looking at it in a very close manner,’ Aderholt said. ‘I would think in this day and age that when it’s regarding the dossier issue, that’s been a big topic and I think he knows all about it.’

President Trump has repeatedly branded the Mueller probe a ‘witch hunt’ and said after the release of Barr’s letter the conduct by FBI investigators should be looked at. The president repeatedly taunted Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the Russia probe.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) is conducting his own investigation of the origins of the probe, while also probing the FBI’s 2016 Clinton email investigation.

In another key developing Tuesday, Barr said he was sticking to a proposed timeline, an indication that he has made progress in vetting information for redactions from what he will allow to be released.

‘From my standpoint, within a week, I will be in a position to release the report to the public and then I will engage with the chairmen of both Judiciary Committees about that report,’ Barr testified Tuesday.

But lawmakers at a House subcommittee hearing grilled him about the redactions he would make to the report, and tried to pin him down on what material he would withhold – as well as whether he would ever reveal why it got excised.

‘We will color-code the excisions from the report and we will provide explanatory notes describing the basis for each redaction,’ Barr said, who said Mueller’s team was participating in the redactions.

He said there were four categories of redactions: information presented to grad juries; passages which would reveal intelligence sources and methods; details of ongoing prosecution cases; and information about ‘incidental parties’ which could harm their ‘privacy and reputational interests.’

And Barr also flatly told Democrats that he will not hand over the entire report and its underlying evidence, setting up a major battle with Congress over Mueller.

His appearance in front of one of the House Appropriations Committee subcommittees was the first time he has answered questions on Mueller – but he repeatedly refused to offer any insight into its contents.

Barr would not also directly answer a question about whether the White House had seen the Mueller report, was briefed in advance of Barr’s letter, or had been briefed on its contents.

‘I’ve said what I’m going to say about the report today,’ said Barr. ‘I’ve issued three letters about it. And I was willing to discuss the historic information of how the report came to me and my decision on Sunday,’ Barr said.

‘But I’ve already laid out the process that is going forward to release these reports hopefully within a week, and I’m not going to say anything more about it until the report is out and everyone has a chance to look at it,’ he continued.

He also wouldn’t directly respond to a question about whether President Trump was accurate when he said the report was a ‘complete and total exoneration’ of him.

Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey of New York pointed to a passage in his letter stating that Mueller and his team included information on both sides of whether the president could potentially be charged with obstruction of justice.

‘I’m not going to discuss it any further until after the report is out,’ Barr responded.

Barr described a process for putting out  the report that could occur in two phases. Next week, he plans to release to the public a report with the redactions he has discussed. He told Lowey he would not put out the unredacted version.

HAVE A SEAT: Barr fielded questions about redactions, and whether the White House had seen the report. He wouldn’t answer that question directly

‘No, the first pass at this is going to produce a report that makes these redactions based on these four categories’ described in a letter to Congress. Then, he said, he would consult with the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to see ‘whether they need more information and see if there’s a way we could accommodate that.’

Barr told lawmakers he was operating under regulations that govern the circumstances for transmitting a special counsel report to Congress.

‘I am relying on my own discretion to make as much public as I can,’ he told them.

‘I do think it’s important that the public have an opportunity to learn the results of the special counsel’s work,’ said Barr.

His response was terse. ‘I think that’s the language from the report,’ Barr said.

‘That’s a statement made by the special counsel. I report it as one of his bottom-line conclusions. So I’m not in a position to discuss that further until the report is all out. And then what is meant by exonerate is not really a question that I can answer – what he meant by that,’ Barr continued.

Crist asked him: ‘As you sit here today you can’t opine after having read the report yourself, why it reaches that conclusion that it does not exonerate the president?’

‘That’s right,’ said Barr.

The exchange was one of several during Tuesday’s hearing that included long periods of silence, as lawmakers expected Barr to say more.

House Democrats got their first chance at the hearing to grill Barr point-blank about why he cranked out a four-page summary of the Mueller report just 48 hours after he got it – and whether he softened its conclusions.

Rep. Jose Serrano, a House subcommittee chairman, raised the issue of the ‘elephant in the room’ at the start of a high-stakes hearing.

He said lawmakers had ‘serious concerns about the process by which you formulated your letter and uncertainty about when we can expect to see the full report.’

 

Barr was asked about President Trump’s claim that the report was a complete and total exoneration of him

‘I believe the American people deserve to see the full report,’ said Serrano. Serrano noted that Congress voted unanimously to see the full Mueller report.

‘We’re not here today to be in a confrontational situation with you,’ said Serrano. ‘What cannot happen is that somebody higher than you tells you that you don’t have to answer our questions or you don’t have to deal with us at all. That’s not who we are as a country,’ he said

Full Committee chair Rep. Nita Lowey blasted Barr’s letter early in the hearing.

‘We have no idea how long [the report] actually is’ she fumed. ‘All we have is your four page summary which seems to cherry pick from the report, to draw the most favorable conclusion possible for the president.’

She said of the letter Barr turned around in just 48 hours: ‘Even for someone who has done this job before, I would argue it’s more suspicious than impressive.’

Barr, who faces lawmakers for the first time since taking office – also is set to get peppered with questions about the recusal process he is overseeing to determine what parts of the 400-page Mueller report he may withhold from lawmakers and from the public.

Barr has set up four categories of information he intends to vet to see whether it should be held back – prompting Democrats to demand he release the entire, un-redacted report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller assembled over two years with a budget of tens of millions.

 

In his first appearance on Capitol Hill since taking office, Attorney General William Barr arrives to appear before a House Appropriations subcommittee to make his Justice Department budget request

In addition to screening for grand jury material that by law is not to be made public, Barr wrote Congress that he would vet the Mueller report for information that would impact ‘reputational interests.’

Barr isn’t coming to Congress to talk about the report, but lawmakers are expected to ask about it anyway as they anxiously wait to see it in the coming days.

The topic of the House appropriations subcommittee hearing is the Justice Department’s budget, and Barr’s prepared remarks sent to the committee on Monday focused on funding requests for immigration enforcement and to combat violent crime and opioid addiction, not mentioning Mueller’s report at all.

He appeared before the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee

Mueller sent his final report to Barr on March 22, ending his almost two-year investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Barr released a four-page letter summarizing the report two days later and said he would release a redacted version of the full report by mid-April, ‘if not sooner.’

The new attorney general’s budget testimony – traditionally a dry affair, and often addressing the parochial concerns of lawmakers – comes as Democrats are enraged that Barr is redacting material from the report and frustrated that his summary framed a narrative about President Trump before they were able to see the full version.

The Democrats are demanding that they see the full report and all its underlying evidence as Trump and his Republican allies are pushing back.

In excerpts from her opening statement released Monday night, House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said that Barr’s summary letter ‘raises more questions than it answers.’

The chairman of the subcommittee, Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano of New York, also said there were unanswered questions, including ‘serious concerns about the process by which you formulated your letter; and uncertainty about when we can expect to see the full report.’

Barr said in the summary released last month that Mueller didn’t find a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and the Kremlin.

Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided that the evidence was insufficient to establish obstruction.

Facing the intensifying concerns from Democrats that he may have whitewashed Mueller’s findings, Barr has twice moved to defend, or at least explain, his handling of the process since receiving the special counsel’s report.

He has said that he did not intend for his four-page summary of Mueller’s main conclusions to be an ‘exhaustive recounting’ of his work and that he could not immediately release the entire report because it included grand jury material and other sensitive information that needed to first be redacted.

Trump tweeted: ‘The Democrats will never be satisfied, no matter what they get, how much they get, or how many pages they get. It will never end, but that’s the way life goes!’

He will likely be asked to further explain himself at the hearing Tuesday and at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday that is also on the budget.

Barr is scheduled to testify on the report itself at separate hearings before the Senate and House judiciary committees on May 1 and May 2.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House judiciary panel, confirmed the May 2 date on Twitter and said he would like Mueller to testify.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said he would be satisfied hearing only from Barr and not Mueller.

While Trump took a victory lap after Mueller concluded his Russia investigation, it now appears to have been premature.

The scramble to frame the investigation’s findings in the best political light is sure to be renewed in coming days when Mueller’s report is expected to be released in redacted form.

Now that the American public will get a look at details beyond the four-page investigation summary written by William Barr, some Trump allies are concerned that the president was too quick to declare complete triumph and they’re pushing the White House to launch a pre-emptive attack.

Trump seems to be of the same mind.

‘The Democrats will never be satisfied, no matter what they get, how much they get, or how many pages they get,’ Trump tweeted Monday, two days after he blasted ‘Bob Mueller’s team of 13 Trump Haters & Angry Democrats.’

READ IN FULL: Attorney General Barr’s letter to Congress summarizing the Mueller investigation findings

 

With the goal to discredit what’s coming, Trump and his allies have unleashed a series of broadsides against Mueller’s team and the Democrats pushing for full release of the final report.

No longer is the president agreeing that Mueller acted honorably, as he did the day after the special counsel’s conclusions were released.

Instead, he’s joining his allies in trying to undermine the integrity of the investigators and the credibility of their probe.

‘You’re darn right I’m going after them again,’ Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s attorneys, told The Associated Press.

‘I never thought they did their job in a professional manner. … Only because there is overwhelming evidence that the president didn’t do anything wrong, they were forced to admit they couldn’t find anything on him. They sure tried.’

While the president unleashed his personal grievances, his team seized on any exculpatory information in Barr’s letter, hoping to swiftly define the conversation, according to six White House officials and outside advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private deliberations.

Those officials and advisers acknowledged that the victory lap was deliberately premature.

Trump’s inner circle knows there will likely be further releases of embarrassing or politically damaging information.

Barr’s letter, for instance, hinted that there would be at least one unknown action by the president that Mueller examined as a possible act of obstruction.

A number of White House aides have privately said they are eager for Russia stories, good or bad, to fade from the headlines.

And there is fear among some presidential confidants that the rush to spike the football could backfire if bombshell new information emerged.

‘I think they did what they had to do. Regardless of what Barr reported, they needed to claim vindication,’ said Republican strategist Alex Conant, who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.

‘First impressions are important. And the first impression of the Mueller report was very good for Trump.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6903081/House-committee-set-grill-attorney-general-Bill-Barr-Mueller-report.html

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that he is “reviewing the conduct” of the FBI’s Russia probe during the summer of 2016, and that the Department of Justice inspector general will release a report on the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process and other matters in the Russia case in May or June.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr said in public testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee, his first since last month’s release of his four-page summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Barr made the comment during an exchange with Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., ranking member on the panel, who noted that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had referred eight people to the FBI for investigation regarding “alleged misconduct during the Russia investigation including the leak of classified material and alleged conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court in order to spy on then-candidate Trump and other persons.”

The remarks came as the attorney general faced a barrage of tough questions from the Democratic-controlled House panel Tuesday morning regarding Mueller’s report, telling lawmakers he would release a redacted version of the original document “within a week.”

While Barr’s opening statement before the House Appropriations subcommittee, which oversees funding for the Commerce and Justice departments and science agencies, focused on the 2020 budget request for his department, lawmakers on the Democratic-controlled committee pressed him on the Mueller report.

Subcommittee chairman Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., in his own opening statement, said the panel “could not hold this hearing without mentioning the elephant in the room” — the Mueller report.

He referred to a New York Times report from last week that said the special counsel’s office had already created summary documents of the report that Serrano said “were ignored in your letter.” He added that, per the reporting, some investigators on the team “felt that your summary understates the level of malfeasance by the President and several of his campaign and White House advisers.”

“The American people have been left with many unanswered questions; serious concerns about the process by which you formulated your letter; and uncertainty about when we can expect to see the full report,” Serrano said. “…I think it would strike a serious blow to our system and yes, to our democracy if that report is not fully seen.”

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee, said in her opening statement that Barr’s handling of the Mueller report had been “unacceptable,” adding that the speed of Barr’s summary of the lengthy document was “more suspicious than impressive.”

Barr defended his handling of the document, listing several areas that he believes should be redacted, including grand jury information, information that the intelligence community believes would reveal sources and methods, information in the report that could interfere with ongoing prosecutions and information that “implicates the privacy or reputational interests of peripheral players where there’s a decision not to charge them.”

The attorney general said that Mueller is working with him and his team through the process and that they will “color code” the redacted areas in the report and provide explanatory notes describing the basis for each redaction.

He said that his original timetable “still stands” to release the report by mid-April: “From my standpoint, within a week, I will be in a position to release the report to the public.”

Lowey expressed incredulity that Barr was able to fully digest the Mueller report and compile a summary of it in 48 hours.

“It seems your mind must have already been made up,” she said.

Barr responded that “the thinking of the special counsel was not a mystery to the people of the Department of Justice prior to his submission of the report. He had been interacting, he and his people were interacting with the deputy attorney general.”

Asked whether Mueller or anyone on his team reviewed Barr’s summary of the report in advance, Barr said that Mueller’s team “did not play a role” in drafting that document and that he did give Mueller an opportunity an opportunity to review it, but he “declined.”

He would not respond to questions from Lowey about whether he had shared any additional information from the report with the White House, or whether administration officials had seen the full document.

Barr later clarified during the hearing that before his summary was sent out, “we did advise the White House counsel’s office that the letters were being sent” and while they weren’t give the document in advance, “it may have been read to them.”

Lowey pointed out that while Barr’s summary of the Mueller report said that it was inconclusive about whether Trump obstructed justice, it also said that it did not exonerate him. Lowey added that Trump, meanwhile, has stated publicly that it represented a complete and total exoneration.

Asked who is factually accurate, Barr demurred. “It’s hard to have that discussion without the contents of that report, isn’t it?” he said.

Barr said several times during the hearing that he was technically operating under a regulation established under the Clinton administration, which he said does not provide for release of the report, and so he is relying instead on his own discretion. Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, who wrote the regulations, recently told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that the regulations don’t necessarily prescribe what Barr claims, saying there is “no excuse whatsoever” for not releasing the full report.

Republicans, meanwhile, largely looked to steer questioning away from the Russia probe. Aderholt began his series of questions about the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., asked Barr about the Justice Department’s efforts to combat human trafficking.

Democrats have demanded that Barr release the full Mueller report, which spans nearly 400 pages. Barr, who said in a previous letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that he planned to release the report to Congress “in mid-April, if not sooner,” also said that there would be redactions.

House Democrats had given Barr until April 2 to submit the full report to Congress, a deadline that was not met. In response, the House Judiciary Committee last week passed a resolution that authorizes Nadler to issue a subpoena for the full, unredacted report. It has not yet been issued.