Elizabeth Warren calls William Barr a ‘disgrace’
The Massachusetts senator says Donald Trump's attorney general should resign following the release of a letter from Robert Mueller expressing disapproval of his summary of the special counsel's investigation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for Attorney General William Barr’s resignation Wednesday following the release of a letter from Special Counsel Robert Mueller expressing concern about his handling of his report on the investigation into President Donald Trump and Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“AG Barr is a disgrace,” Warren tweeted from her campaign account Wednesday, “and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that he’s not a credible head of federal law enforcement,”
In a separate post from her Senate office account, Warren tweeted that Barr has forsaken his oath of loyalty to the Constitution.
“He should resign,” she wrote.
AG Barr is a disgrace, and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that he’s not a credible head of federal law enforcement. He should resign—and based on the actual facts in the Mueller report, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the President.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) May 1, 2019
The Attorney General does not swear an oath of loyalty to any one individual. The AG swears an oath of loyalty to the Constitution of the United States. Barr has made clear that he doesn’t swear his loyalty that way & that disqualifies him from being AG. He should resign.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 1, 2019
The Massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential candidate also reiterated her belief that Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against Trump for his attempts to obstruct Mueller’s investigation. Warren was the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for Trump’s impeachment, and became the second candidate, joining Julían Castro, to say Barr should resign.
Warren says her view is based on Trump’s “well-documented” actions as outlined in Mueller’s report and that impeachment proceedings are “the responsibility of Congress as a co-equal branch of government.” In a follow-up tweet Wednesday afternoon, which included a clip of the senator’s MSNBC appearance Tuesday night, she said Barr’s four-page memo to Congress in March summarizing the Mueller report was “intended to protect the man in the White House.”
Donald Trump isn’t king, and no one is above the law. We know Barr’s deceptive “summary” was intended to protect the man in the White House, and Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the President. pic.twitter.com/vTKTqEn83p
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) May 1, 2019
The Trump-appointed attorney general was testifying in the Senate on Wednesday following the release of Mueller’s letter.
Writing to Barr in late March, Mueller complained that the attorney general’s summary of the special counsel’s 448-page report “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” and led to “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”
According to Barr’s summary at the time, Mueller’s investigation found no evidence that the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian efforts to swing the 2016 election in his favor and left open the question of whether the president illegally attempted to obstruct the federal government’s investigation into the matter.
“While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller wrote in the report.
In his summary, Barr said he had reviewed the evidence in the report and concluded there was not sufficient evidence to charge Trump for obstruction. However, as The Washington Post reported Tuesday, Mueller repeatedly pressed his longtime Justice Department colleague and friend — in a March 27 letter and subsequently over the phone — to release more aspects of the report, as officials worked to release a redacted version of the 448-page document. According to the Post, Mueller felt Barr’s summary had cherry-picked aspects of the repot and left out key details.
“This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations,” Mueller wrote.
Barr defended his handling to the release before the Senate on Wednesday, testifying that he thought it would be best to release the full, redacted report all at once, rather than doing so in “piecemeal fashion, leading to public debate over incomplete information.” He also criticized Mueller for spending so much time investigating Trump for obstruction of justice, only to reach an inconclusive decision.
“I think that if he felt that he shouldn’t go down the path of making a traditional prosecutive decision than he shouldn’t have investigated,” Barr said. “That was the time to pull up.”
Still, Democrats remained critical of Barr as Wednesday’s hearing wore on, questioning his credibility and accusing him of misleading the public. A number of prominent Democratic figures, and even some anti-Trump Republicans, have said Barr should resign, citing his testimony last month in which he professed ignorance about whether Mueller and his team supported his summary of their report.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat, became the second senator to call for Barr’s resignation Wednesday.
Mazie Hirono to Bill Barr: “You lied to Congress…You knew you lied, and now we know.” pic.twitter.com/d0hgQKG3ms
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 1, 2019
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and California Sen. Kamala Harris, who are also running for the Democratic presidential nomination, joined the resignation calls Wednesday afternoon as well.
Attorney General Barr needs to resign. Today, he’s proven once again that he’s more interested in protecting the president than working for the American people. We can’t trust him to tell the truth, and these embarrassing displays of propaganda have to stop.
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) May 1, 2019
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1123665286782230531
