Attorney General William Barr said it is “infuriating” that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff insists there was collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia after a “complete collapse” of the “Russiagate” scandal.
Barr, who has served as President Trump’s attorney general since early 2019, criticized members of the media for pushing what he views as false claims of Trump-Russia coordination and Democrats for saying one thing behind closed doors and another in front of the cameras.
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo pressed Barr on Schiff’s repeated declarations of there being “collusion in plain sight” and asked the attorney general about “accountability.”
“Well, as far as public comments like these people have been making in press conferences and on television and so forth, you know, the accountability is really elections for Schiff. That’s why we have elections. If the people of his district want him to continue to behave as he has, then they can send him back to office,” Barr said in a clip of Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, which aired Tuesday on Fox News. “It is infuriating, and it’s the same phenomenon I discussed with the media, which is the media misled the American people grossly over a long period of time with exaggerated claims and misinformation, and they haven’t been held accountable — and the same for a lot of these talking heads.”
Richard Grenell, the now-former acting director of national intelligence, roiled Democrats and pleased Republicans by declassifying long-sought-after documents related to investigations into Russian election interference and was a particular thorn in the side of Schiff, pressuring the California Democrat to release dozens of witness transcripts from the panel’s own investigation.
The transcripts, made public in early May, showed President Barack Obama’s spy chief and other top national security and law enforcement officials from his administration testified they did not see direct evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence for most of Obama’s presidency, told the committee in July 2017 that he “never saw any direct empirical evidence” of any member of then-candidate Trump’s campaign “plotting/conspiring” with the Russian government.
But Clapper painted a much more dramatic picture as a CNN contributor. In May 2019, he appeared to contradict his sworn testimony.
“What was the Trump campaign doing at the same time?” Clapper said. “Essentially aiding and abetting the Russians and having contacts, dozens of contacts, with Russians, some of whom were connected officially to Russian intelligence, and not reporting it.”
These terms, to “aid” or “abet” a foreign power such as Russia, fall under the U.S. criminal code and potentially serious criminal penalties.
CNN host Brooke Baldwin interrupted Clapper to make that point: “Not legally aiding and abetting.”
Clapper backed off, saying, “Well, I’m using that in a parochial — or a colloquial sense, I guess.”
Other key Obama officials — national security adviser Susan Rice (who is now under consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate), deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power — were similarly unable to provide solid evidence of Trump-Russia collusion while under oath.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel report, released in April 2019, shows his investigation found the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but his team “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia. No one was ever charged with coordinating with Russia.
Schiff has consistently insisted that collusion did occur, however, saying in 2018 that “there’s plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight” and in 2019 that “there is ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.” Even after the release of the Russia witness transcripts, Schiff insisted that “there is ample evidence of the corrupt interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia, both direct and circumstantial.”
“It’s been stunning that all we have gotten from the mainstream media is sort of bovine silence in the face of the complete collapse of the so-called Russiagate scandal, which they did all they could to sensationalize and drive,” Barr said in part of the interview that aired Sunday. “And it’s, like, not even a ‘whoops.’ They’re just onto the next false scandal. So, that has been surprising to me that people aren’t concerned about civil liberties and the integrity of our governmental process.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Russia investigation, which was released in December, criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier. Steele worked at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. Recently declassified footnotes showed the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation and still used it.
The attorney general has criticized Mueller for seeming to ignore the possibility of Russian disinformation in Steele’s dossier.
Barr also said he expects “developments” in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators by the end of the summer.
