Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday asserted that it’s “not a crime” for President Trump to ask an aide to lie for him, and argued there is a difference between asking someone to fire special counsel Robert Mueller versus having him removed based on a conflict of interest.
At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) questioned Barr over whether Trump obstructed justice.
“You still have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyer’s account in order to prevent further criticism of himself,” Feinstein said, referencing an episode detailed in Mueller’s report involving former White House counsel Don McGahn.
“Well that’s not a crime,” Barr responded.
“So you can, in this situation, instruct someone to lie?” Feinstein asked.
Barr argued that Trump would have to be “impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding” for it to amount to obstruction of justice and suggested McGahn had taken note of Trump’s requests to remove the special counsel to memorialize that the president was not explicitly asking for Mueller to be “fired.”
“There is a distinction between saying to someone ‘go fire him, go fire Mueller,’ and saying ‘have him removed based on conflict,’ ” Barr said. “They have different results.”
The latter request, he asserted, would lead to another special counsel being appointed.
.@SenFeinstein: "You still have a situation where a president essentially tries to change the lawyer's account in order to prevent further criticism of himself."
Attorney General William Barr: "Well, that's not a crime."
Watch LIVE on C-SPAN3 https://t.co/f5O4aCNCK8 pic.twitter.com/soFkA3FgyQ
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 1, 2019
………
- Discussion
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.