Flashback: Barr Claimed In April That He Didn’t Know How Mueller Viewed His Letter

It looks like Attorney General Bill Barr will have some explaining to do when he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

A Tuesday evening report from the Washington Post revealed that, just a few days after Barr published his March 24 letter summarizing the main conclusions from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Mueller himself wrote a letter to Barr complaining that the attorney general “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”

But after receiving that dispatch from the special counsel, Barr claimed in two separate congressional hearings that he was unfamiliar with Mueller’s opinion of how he’d assessed the report.

At an April 9 hearing in the House, Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) cited reports that members of Mueller’s team were unhappy with the way Barr portrayed the obstruction section of the report. Crist asked Barr if he knew what those reports were referencing.

“No, I don’t,” Barr replied.

A day later at a Senate hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) asked Barr, “Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?”

“I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion,” Barr replied.

Barr claimed in April that he didn't know whether Mueller supported his letter describing the report pic.twitter.com/pUjjkbq3OZ

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 1, 2019