Attorney General William Barr brushed aside claims that he lied to Congress about how he handled special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, saying it is “laughable” to suggest he would perjure himself.
“I think it’s largely being made to try to discredit me, partly because they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election,” Barr said Friday during an exclusive interview with Fox News. “But obviously you can look at the face of my testimony and you can see on its face that there is nothing inaccurate about it.”
Barr was responding to an assertion made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., earlier this month that he misled a congressional committee about his communications with the special counsel, including how Mueller felt about the accuracy of Barr’s summary of the report.
[Related: Schumer: Barr ‘cannot be trusted’]
Barr told the House Appropriations Committee on April 9, he was not aware of any concerns Mueller had with how the attorney general handled the report.
On May 1, a letter was released to the public showing Mueller complaining to Barr about his summary saying it did not “fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his findings.
That sparked Pelosi’s comments and a subpoena for Barr’s testimony about the report from the House Judiciary Committee.
“If anybody else did that it would be considered a crime,” Pelosi said.
The House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt after he declined to show up for a hearing about his handling of the report.
The report found President Trump’s 2016 campaign did not collude with Russians to influence the election. Barr determined Trump at no point attempted to obstruct Mueller’s probe.
Trump and his defenders have routinely called the Mueller investigation a politically motivated witch hunt carried out by “angry” Democrats who are seeking to remove him from office.
