Barr Threatens to Refuse to Testify at House Hearing on Mueller Report
Any doubt that Attorney General William Barr is acting like
President Donald Trump’s defense attorney has long
since faded.
Barr now is threatening to skip a much-anticipated hearing
in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday over a dispute with the committee
chairman about the hearing’s format. This begs the question: What is
Barr so afraid of? Perjuring himself?
The attorney general is scheduled to testify before committees
in the Senate and the House on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. But the
Justice Department now is in a fight with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep.
Jerrold Nadler over the format of questioning during the hearing.
Nadler wants two rounds of questioning: The first would be
five-minute rounds conducted by members of the committee, followed by a
follow-up round of 30 minutes for each side. During the second round, Nadler wants
to allow committee
counsel to ask the questions, CNN reported.
This is similar to what a Senate panel did during the questioning
of Christine Blasey Ford during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court
confirmation hearings, although Republicans argue that it is less common for
committees to have counsel question a sitting Cabinet member.
Nadler also wants the committee to go into a closed session
to discuss sections of the Mueller
report that are redacted.
However, according to CNN, the Justice Department told
Nadler’s office that Barr would refuse to allow committee counsel to question
him, and he doesn’t want to go into a closed session to discuss the redacted
sections of the report. This doesn’t sound very transparent.
If Barr doesn’t show up, however, Nadler
said he’d subpoena him.
“The witness is not going to tell the committee how to
conduct its hearing, period,” Nadler told CNN. If Barr refuses to testify, “Then
we will have to subpoena him, and we will have to use whatever means we can to
enforce the subpoena,” Nadler said.