US Attorney General William Barr offered a combative defense of his independence from US President Donald Trump as he prepared to testify before a committee in the House of Representatives for the first time since he became attorney general more than 17 months ago.
“The president has not attempted to interfere,” Barr said in a six-page prepared statement for a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday. “On the contrary, he has told me from the start that he expects me to exercise my independent judgment to make whatever call I think is right.”
Barr was to sit down for hours of testimony in front of a panel that could be hard-pressed to cover all the issues on which Democrats say he has abandoned the Department of Justice’s political independence to back a president who demands nothing short of strict loyalty.
However, Barr was to portray himself as a victim of slander and demonization by Democrats, reasserting his position that Trump was — as the president has claimed — the victim of wrongdoing by the administration of former US president Barack Obama and by anti-Trump forces in the FBI.
“Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus Russiagate scandal, many of the Democrats on this committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the president’s factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions,” Barr said.
Since becoming attorney general, Barr has sought to discredit the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump or anyone associated with his presidential campaign team conspired with Russia in its interference in the 2016 election.
Barr said his “decisions on criminal matters have been left to my independent judgement, based on the law and fact, without any direction or interference from the White House or anyone outside the department.”
Previewing the Democrats’ position, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler last month said that “the sickness that we must address is Mr Barr’s use of the Department of Justice as a weapon to serve the president’s petty, private interests.”
Barr’s written statement did not address some of the most controversial decisions he has taken, such as overruling his own prosecutors to reduce a recommended prison sentence for Trump ally Roger Stone — whose sentence has since been commuted by Trump — or dropping the prosecution of former US national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Democrats were also planning to grill Barr on his role in the aggressive use of federal forces in response to protests against racism and police abuse after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
“In the wake of George Floyd’s death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims,” Barr said.
“The current situation in Portland is a telling example. Remarkably, the response from many in the media and local elected offices to this organized assault has been to blame the federal government,” he said.
“It would be an oversimplification to treat the problem as rooted in some deep-seated racism generally infecting our police departments. The threat to black lives posed by crime on the streets is massively greater than any threat posed by police misconduct,” he said.
“The leading cause of death for young black males is homicide,” Barr said.
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