US attorney general William Barr says there was no collusion between Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election
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William Barr has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, doubling down on his interpretation of the Mueller report and claiming that he never misled Congress about the special counsel's frustrations.
The testimony came just after the public release of a March letter from special counsel Robert Mueller to the attorney general, in which the investigator expressed frustration with how Mr Barr had presented the findings of the Trump-Russia report ot the public.
Mr Barr had released a four page summary of the report to Congress, which said that the nearly two year investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, and that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Donald Trump with obstruction.
But, Mr Barr was met with criticism from Senate Democrats who expressed amazement that Mr Barr had told a Congressional committee in April that he had not been aware of any frustration from the special counsel or his team related to his presentation of the summary. The recently released letter, Democrats said, showed that Mr Barr had been directly confronted on the issue, even though Mr Barr claimed that he called Mr Mueller personally after receiving the letter.
The hours-long testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee ended with committee chairman Lindsey Graham — a prominent Trump supporter — telling reporters that the issue is "over", and that he had no intention of asking Mr Mueller to testify before his committee. Democrats meanwhile, pushed for that testimony in the Senate, while the House announced Mr Mueller would testify there.
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Since the report's release, Mr Trump and the right-wing media have hailed the findings of the report as a “total exoneration”, despite Mr Mueller declaring the opposite and the report painting a highly unflattering portrait of Mr Trump and his inner circle.
Mr Barr, during his testimony, stood by his determination not to charge Mr Trump for obstruction — arguing that, since there was no collusion or conspiracy, that the president could not have obstructed justice by firing former FBI director James Comey and then repeatedly attempt to get others to fire Mr Mueller.
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When pushed on whether it was appropriate for Mr Trump to lie to the American people about contacts between his campaign and Russians, about his intentions with regards to Mr Mueller's employment as special counsel, and other questionable instances surfaced by the report, Mr Barr said that his job is not to determine who is behaving well or not.
"I'm not in the business of determining wether lies were told to the American people," Mr Barr said of the president. "I'm in the business of determining whether crimes were committed."
Mr Barr will return to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Mr Barr is expected any moment now. The Senate Judiciary chambers have filled up with the senators on the panel, including chairman Lindsey Graham — who we can likely expect to get fired up in defense of Mr Barr and the president.
Linsey Graham says that "we have a lot of work to do" to defend the US from foreign influence.
He also broke from previous statements by Mr Trump, saying that Russia did attempt to influence our elections — not a "400 pound man" on his bed, which the president had claimed without any evidence.
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