“But I do want to, before we move on from the subject of Barr and contempt, talk about, I think, the most grave concern about Bill Barr. And that is, during his Senate testimony, he opined that the president could have made the Mueller investigation go away any time he wanted because he thought it was unfair. That’s his view of the unitary executive.
Under that view a president is truly above the law. Because what president would not think an investigation against him or her was unfair? It also means that the president can make go away any of the investigations that were farmed out to any of the other elements of the Department of Justice. And, because they are stonewalling us on just about everything, it also means that we might not know – unless whistleblowers step forward – whether Bill Barr is abusing his authority even beyond the fundamental abuse by trying to exonerate the president on obstruction of justice.
And so we find ourselves, I think, for the first time with an attorney general who really is the president’s defense lawyer and spokesperson. And who’s quite good at it. And has the veneer of respectability to camouflage what he’s doing. He is not the sophist that Giuliani is. He’s much more dangerous. And I think he’s the second most dangerous man in the country for that reason.
When you listen to his interviews and you listen to the way he dissembles—when he was asked, even on Fox News, about, well, Didn’t Don McGahn call for Mueller to be fired? His answer was, No, he called for him to be removed, as if that’s a distinction that really makes a difference here. When he was asked, Well, you said that the president fully cooperated, but the president wouldn’t even sit down for an interview. No, no, I said the White House fully cooperated.
When you have an attorney general willing to dissemble that way. When you have an attorney general—and I hesitate to use the word, but there’s no other word that seems to apply here—that lies to Congress as he did when Charlie Christ asked him about whether he was aware of these revelations that had been reported about the Mueller team, and he said that he was not. That’s a very dangerous situation.
And as someone who came out of that department—I spent six years with the Justice department. I venerate the department. To think that it is being led by someone this way—you know, it breaks my heart for the department, but it’s profoundly concerning for the country.” – Congressman Adam Schiff on Attorney General Bill Barr, Council on Foreign Relations, June 4, 2019
Ryan Goodman, at Just Security, provides a side by side comparison of Barr’s and Mueller’s statements about the Special Counsel Report. Goodman comments:
“Whether or not Mueller was intentionally trying to correct the record, the differences between what he and Barr said are, in many cases, stark. Some of the differences involve near complete contradictions—in other words Mueller’s statement and Barr’s statements cannot both be true. Other differences are more a matter of emphasis or tone (e.g., references to the threat posed by the Russian operations, descriptions of the qualities of the special counsel staff).
The special counsel’s Report also contradicts some of Barr’s statements (such as his claim that the Report found no evidence of “collusion,” his suggestion that difficult issues of law and fact stopped the special counsel from concluding the president engaged in criminal obstruction, his claim that the President cooperate fully with the investigation). The following analysis, however, does not include the Report. Instead, it focuses only on Mueller’s public statement and how it compares to statements made by Barr between March 22 (the date that the special counsel handed his final report to the attorney general) and May 29 (the date of Mueller’s statement). This includes statements made by Barr in his 4-page summary submitted to Congress, a formal press briefing, and three congressional hearings, but it does not include Barr’s interviews with Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.”