A placard has been placed on the witness table where Attorney General Robert Barr is schedule to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on May 2, 2019 in Washington, DC.
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House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., threatened to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress if the Department of Justice does provide access to the unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report.
"Yes, we will continue to negotiate for access to the full report. And yes, we will have no choice but to move quickly to hold the attorney general in contempt if he stalls or fails to negotiate in good faith," Barr said during a committee hearing Thursday morning that Barr had declined to attend.
Nadler's speech sounded off on Barr, who oversaw the tail-end of Mueller's 22-month probe of Russia election interference, possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump himself.
"He has failed to check the President's worst instincts. He has not only misrepresented the findings of the special counsel, he has failed to protect the special counsel's investigation from unfair political attacks. He has himself unfairly attacked the special counsel's investigation," Nadler said of Barr. "He has even failed to show up today."
After the hearing, Nadler said that the committee majority will make "one more good-faith attempt" to get the full Mueller report from Barr. If that doesn't work, "then we'll hold the attorney general in contempt" and proceed from there, Nadler said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Nadler's format for the hearing, which would have carved out time for the committee's staff attorneys to question Barr, was "unprecedented and unnecessary."
The committee's ranking Repbulican, Doug Collins, R-Ga., fired back at Nadler during the hearing. "Ludicrous demands from the chairman made it impossible for the attorney general to join us here today," Collins said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
Collins accused Nadler of attempting to litigate impeachment proceedings against Trump without actually making the commitment.
"The chairman can't have it both ways," Collins said. "He can't try to pacify his liberal base by pretending to do impeachment without actually taking the plunge. The reality of our chamber and this distinguished committee is that when it comes to impeachment, you're either in, Mr. Chairman, or you're out, and, right now, you're out."
Barr has come under heavy fire from Democrats for his handling of the 448-page Mueller report. Some have argued that his initial four-page summary of the top-line conclusions of the report was meant to frame Trump in the best possible light. Their criticisms intensified sharply this week, when news outlets revealed that Mueller himself had written a letter to Barr complaining that the summary distorted the "substance" of the report and caused "public confusion" about its results.
Democrats claimed Barr had misled them by not revealing the letter from Mueller in prior testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
In his opening statement to the Senate committee Wednesday, Barr claimed that he called Mueller after receiving the letter to ask why he had sent it. Barr claimed that Mueller assured him that the summary was not inaccurate, but rather that "the press reporting had been inaccurate and that the press was reading too much into it."
But Barr said he won't hand over notes of that phone call. "Why should you have them?" he asked when Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., made the request.
After the brief hearing in the House on Thursday morning, other Democrats tore into Barr.
"The so-called attorney general can run, but he cannot hide," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said.
Nadler told reporters: "We will make sure that no president becomes a monarch."
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