Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday he decided not to charge President Trump with obstruction of justice without seeing the underlying evidence of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report.
“No, we accepted the statements in the report as a factual record. We did not go underneath it to see whether or not they were accurate. We accepted it as accurate,” Barr said of himself and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Barr made the comments in response to a question from Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.
“Yet you represented to the American public that the evidence was not, quote, sufficient to support an obstruction of justice offense …” Harris started.
“The evidence presented in the report, this is not a — this is not mysterious process. In the Department of Justice, we have [prosecution] memos and declination memos every day coming up and we don’t go and look at the underlying evidence,” Barr said, referring to the procedure by which department decides to prosecute certain cases.
[Also read: Kamala Harris stumps Barr with question on whether Trump suggested an investigation]
In the report, Mueller’s team outlined 10 possible scenarios in which Trump could have obstructed justice. The special counsel, however, did not conclude whether Trump committed any wrongdoing. Congressional Democrats have argued that Mueller delegated that decision to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Barr and his Justice Department disagree that Mueller had that intention.
After her line of questioning, Harris walked out of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room and told reporters that Barr should resign.
“I believe that what was absolutely enlightening, and should be deeply troubling to the entire American public, is that he made a decision and didn’t review the evidence. No prosecutor worth her salt would make a decision about whether the president of the United States was involved in an obstruction of justice without reviewing the evidence. This attorney general lacks all credibility and has, I think, compromised the American public’s ability to believe that he is a purveyor of justice,” she said.
