Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday cancelled plans to testify before the House of Representatives about his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s Russia investigation, further inflaming tensions between US President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barr was due to\n face the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, \nbut pulled out after the two sides were unable to agree on the format \nfor the hearing.Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Nadler\u2019s\n proposal to have committee lawyers question Barr was \u201cunprecedented and\n unnecessary,\u201d saying questions should come from lawmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \nJustice Department also said on Wednesday it would not comply with a \nNadler-issued subpoena seeking an unredacted version of Mueller\u2019s report\n and underlying investigative files from the probe.Earlier on Wednesday,\n Barr spent more than four hours before the Republican-controlled Senate\n Judiciary Committee where he fended off Democratic criticism of his \ndecision to clear Trump of criminal obstruction of justice and faulted \nSpecial Counsel Robert Mueller for not reaching a conclusion of his own \non the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his first congressional testimony since \nreleasing a redacted version of Mueller\u2019s report on April 18, Barr also \ndismissed Mueller\u2019s complaints that he initially disclosed the special \ncounsel\u2019s conclusions on March 24 in an incomplete way that caused \npublic confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Illustrating tensions between the two men, Barr\n described as \u201ca bit snitty\u201d a March 27 letter from Mueller in which the\n special counsel urged him to release broader summaries of his findings –\n a step Barr rejected. Trump seized on Barr\u2019s March 24 letter to declare\n that he had been fully exonerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats have accused Barr \nof trying to protect the Republican president, who is seeking \nre-election next year. They pressed Barr on why he decided two days \nafter receiving the 448-page document from Mueller in March to conclude \nthat Trump had not unlawfully sought to obstruct the 22-month \ninvestigation.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday cancelled plans to testify before the House of Representatives about his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s Russia investigation, further inflaming tensions between US President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress. Barr was due to face the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but pulled out after the two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60481,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60479\/revisions\/60481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}