Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers he will not back off the word “spying” in regards to how he described the surveillance conducted on President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Barr was asked about his usage of the word during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, after complaints by Democrats that it unfairly pinned blame on the Obama administration for spying on a political adversary.
“Have you ever referred to authorized department investigative activities, officially or publicly, as spying? I’m not asking for private conversations,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked.
“I’m not going to abjure the use of the word spying. I don’t think — you know, my first job was in the CIA — I don’t think the word spying has any pejorative connotation at all. To me the question is always whether or not it is authorized and adequately predicated, spying,” Barr replied. “I think spying is a good English word that in fact doesn’t have synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating all forms of covert intelligence collections. So I’m not going to back off of the word spying … and I use it frequently as the media.”
Barr said he did not go into the hearing intending to use the word spying, as he said it off the cuff, saying it was confusing when he was asked if he wanted to change his words.
“I was actually thinking, like, what’s the issue? I don’t consider it a pejorative, and frankly, we went back and looked at press usage and up until all the faux outrage a couple weeks ago, it’s commonly used in the press to refer to authorized activities,” Barr said.
“It is not commonly used by the department,” Whitehouse said.
“It’s commonly used by me,” Barr said before the hearing took a break.
