Attorney General William Barr emphasized President Trump has no authority to tell him how to steer U.S. Attorney John Durham’s inquiry into the Russia investigation.
“No,” Barr said when asked Thursday by Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, whether Trump has any dominion under the Constitution to dictate the outcome of the DOJ investigation into misconduct by federal law enforcement and intelligence officials.
Barr said the same in response to a question about whether the president can instruct him to release a report a certain way. “I think Durham is going to report the facts,” he added.
All this came after Inskeep noted how Trump has expressed “very strong opinions” about Durham’s work. The president has, for instance, asserted the Obama administration improperly spied on his campaign and claimed his predecessor committed “treason.”
Democrats, law enforcement veterans, and others have raised concerns that Durham is conducting a politically motivated inquisition, even warning of an “October Surprise” to boost Trump in the November election.
Barr insists that neither Trump’s Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, nor former President Barack Obama are targets of Durham’s investigation.
“No one under investigation in the Durham matter is running for president. And I’ve said publicly that neither President Obama or Vice President Biden are under investigation,” he said. “And I’ve also said I’m committed to having the American people have a free choice in this election between the candidates, and I don’t want the Department of Justice to be interfering in that.”
Barr is under heavy scrutiny after Trump fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office has conducted investigations into associates of the president.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tamped down expectations for an impeachment investigation into Barr, but the heat is rising after DOJ veterans accused the attorney general of intervening in criminal and antitrust cases to protect Trump. Barr has agreed to testify before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee on July 28.
Barr entertained the hypothetical scenario in which a president instructed him to perform some sort of law enforcement action that lacked legal justification.
“I have said that, for example, if the president directed an attorney general to indict somebody where there was no predicate, no probable cause, and no basis for the indictment, that would be a grave abuse of presidential power. And no attorney general would carry that out and be worth their salt. And I’ve said this in my confirmation,” he said. “The president tells you to do something that has no legal basis like that, can’t be justified under the law, then the attorney general shouldn’t do it. The attorney general’s responsibility is to make sure that the laws are faithfully executed.”
Barr recently told Fox News he anticipates “developments” in Durham’s investigation by the end of the summer.
