Amash accuses Barr of selling Trump's 'false narrative'
Rep. Justin Amash, who earlier this month became the first Republican member of Congress to call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, took aim at Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday — charging that the nation’s top law enforcement officer has “used his position to sell the president's false narrative to the American people.”
In a 25-post Twitter spree, the Michigan lawmaker accused Barr of having “deliberately misrepresented” the findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation in a March 24 letter to Congress summarizing the special counsel’s findings.
Amash wrote online Tuesday that Barr’s letter “selectively quotes and summarizes points in Mueller’s report in misleading ways,” and asserted that “the public and Congress were misled” as a result of the attorney general’s initial four-page summary.
Amash admonished Barr for not complying with Mueller’s request — articulated in a March 27 letter from the special counsel to the attorney general — to release the introductions and executive summaries of Mueller’s report.
The congressman also blasted the head of the Justice Department for subsequently testifying before lawmakers that he was not aware of dissatisfaction among members of Mueller’s team with his handling of the report’s rollout.
“Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people,” Amash tweeted. “This will continue if those who have read the report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth.”
Amash on May 18 joined with many national Democrats in calling for Trump’s removal from office, writing online in a series of tweets that the president “has engaged in impeachable conduct.”
The conservative House Freedom Caucus, of which Amash is a founding member, formally condemned him last Monday for the stance.
Amash took to Twitter again last week for another multi-message streak that invoked the president, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former White House counsel Don McGahn, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“Mueller’s report describes a consistent effort by the president to use his office to obstruct or otherwise corruptly impede the Russian election interference investigation because it put his interests at risk,” Amash wrote online Thursday.
“Some of the president’s actions were inherently corrupt,” he added. “Other actions were corrupt — and therefore impeachable — because the president took them to serve his own interests.”
Barr has launched his own investigation to explore the origins of the FBI‘s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump last week granted him sweeping new powers to make classified documents public.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Amash‘s tweets Tuesday.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine