Attorney General Barr defends clearing Trump on obstruction of justice

Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday defended his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report at a tense Senate hearing, explaining in detail his contacts with Mueller, who had objected to his description of the report's findings on obstruction.

In sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr said he wanted to release the report’s bottom-line conclusions as quickly as possible because the public was in a “high state of agitation” over the results of Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and potential coordination between President Trump’s campaign and Moscow.

“Former government officials were confidently predicting that the president or members of his family would be indicted,” Barr told senators in his opening remarks.

Barr said he didn’t believe it was in the “public interest” to allow the public to wonder about Mueller’s conclusions while Justice Department officials pored over the report to make necessary redactions.

He also appeared to put the blame on Mueller for the weeks needed to make the redactions, noting that the report filed to the Department of Justice on March 22 was not marked so that grand jury material could be easily and quickly redacted.

“That’s what we were trying to do — notify the people of the bottom-line conclusions,” Barr told lawmakers, saying he was not trying to “summarize” the report when he released a four-page memo on March 24 stating Mueller did not establish conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow and did not reach a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.