President Trump reportedly wanted Attorney General William Barr to publicly declare he broke no laws during his phone call with Ukraine’s president that is now the subject of impeachment proceedings.
Barr declined the request for him to hold a press conference on the matter, which was conveyed by White House officials to the Justice Department, according to the Washington Post. Trump advisers reportedly said the president has griped about Barr’s refusal to associates in the past few weeks, but sources also say the two remain on good terms.
President Trump responded to the story just after midnight on Thursday morning, tweeting, “The story in the Amazon Washington Post, of course picked up by Fake News CNN, saying ‘President Trump asked for AG Barr to host a news conference clearing him on Ukraine,’ is totally untrue and just another FAKE NEWS story with anonymous sources that don’t exist.”
“The degenerate Washington Post MADE UP the story about me asking Bill Barr to hold a news conference,” Trump added Thursday morning. “Never happened, and there were no sources!”
The story in the Amazon Washington Post, of course picked up by Fake News CNN, saying “President Trump asked for AG Barr to host a news conference clearing him on Ukraine,” is totally untrue and just another FAKE NEWS story with anonymous sources that don’t exist….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2019
“The President has nothing but respect for AG Barr and greatly appreciates the work he’s done on behalf of the country — and no amount of shady sources with clear intent to divide, smear, and slander will change that,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
The New York Times published a similar story about Trump’s alleged request to Barr, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The request would be reminiscent of Trump asking his former FBI director, James Comey, to publicly declare in 2017 that he was not the subject of the Russia investigation, according to Comey’s contemporaneous memos. Comey declined and was later fired in May 2017, after which Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel following the leaking of information from Comey’s memos to the press and after which investigators looked into whether the president sought to obstruct justice.
While the State Department has been drawn deep into the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings on Capitol Hill, the Justice Department has sought to dodge the controversy, even as U.S. Attorney John Durham’s criminal inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation is under scrutiny. Democrats claim that inquiry could be used to achieve retribution against Trump’s political foes. But the Justice Department denied these suggestions, quickly releasing a statement saying Trump never asked Barr to talk to Ukraine and stressing that the inquiry into the genesis of the Russia investigation was completely separate.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. “While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”
Barr has privately expressed frustration with conservative personalities demanding dramatic arrests as the Justice Department reviews the actions of former Obama intelligence officials in its investigation. His position is that it is his job to uphold the same standard of justice for everyone and that indictments should only be handed down when crimes can be proven.
Trump’s request for a public declaration by Barr is said to have been made on about Sept. 25, when the White House released notes on Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The notes showed Trump pushed his foreign counterpart to reach out to Barr and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about investigations into a CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and into Joe and Hunter Biden.
“The president has not spoken with the attorney general about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son,” Kupec said after the transcript was released. “The president has not asked the attorney general to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter. The attorney general has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject. Nor has the attorney general discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”
