Former Attorney General William Barr on Friday responded to reports that the Trump Justice Department seized communications records belonging to two prominent Democratic lawmakers who were spearheading investigations [witch hunts] into then-President Donald Trump.
In a phone interview with Politico, Barr said he doesn’t recall any briefing on this.
The New York Times had reported that in 2017 and 2018, the Justice Department secretly seized the records of at least 12 people connected to the House Intelligence Committee, including its current chair. Barr became attorney general in 2019.
It sounds like another fake news report from the NYT.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General announced Friday they would open a review of the records seizures, and Democratic leaders are standing up their own probes.
According to the Times, the leak investigation swept up the metadata of the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who has since become its chair, and Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, another prominent Trump critic who sits on the panel.
Allegedly, the data was collected to find who the leakers are in the DoJ.
Barr said that while he was attorney general, he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case.” He added that Trump never encouraged him to zero in on the Democratic lawmakers who reportedly became targets of the former president’s push to unmask leakers of classified information.
Trump “was not aware of who we were looking at in any of the cases,” Barr said. “I never discussed the leak cases with Trump. He didn’t really ask me any of the specifics.”
Maybe they should look at Rosenstein.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Friday called for Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions to appear before the Judiciary Committee.
This is going to be another fake crisis.
This is from the NYT report:
The Justice Department has declined to tell Democrats on the committee whether any Republicans were investigated.
Apple turned over only metadata and account information, not photos, emails or other content, according to the person familiar with the inquiry.
After the records provided no proof of leaks, prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington discussed ending that piece of their investigation. But Mr. Barr’s decision to bring in an outside prosecutor helped keep the case alive.
A CNN report in August 2019 about another leak investigation said prosecutors did not recommend to their superiors that they charge Mr. Comey over memos that he wrote and shared about his interactions with Mr. Trump, which were not ultimately found to contain classified information.
Mr. Barr was wary of how Mr. Trump would react, according to a person familiar with the situation. Indeed, Mr. Trump berated the attorney general, who defended the department, telling the president that there was no case against Mr. Comey to be made, the person said. But an investigation remained open into whether Mr. Comey had leaked other classified information about Russia.
Something smacks of fake here. All of these people are liars. We don’t trust Bill Barr either.
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