Barr will face Dem Grilling at the first hearing in the Senate since the publication of the Mueller Report

Senators Democrats should challenge Attorney General William Barr at a dramatic and explosive hearing Wednesday morning at 10:00 (ET), as he faces questions from lawmakers for the first time since the release of the report. Special advocate Robert Mueller on the charges he has submitted to present the investigation findings in favor of President Trump.

Setting the tone, a dozen Democratic senators Tuesday urged the Inspector General of the Department of Justice and the Office of Professional Liability to launch an investigation into Barr's treatment of Mueller's report.

Barr's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to last more than three hours. The hearing will give the Attorney General the greatest opportunity to explain the actions of the department, including a press conference held prior to the release of the report, and allow him to deal with partisan accusations that he sacrificed his integrity to become the protector of the president.

Barr is also invited separately to appear before the Democrat-led Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but the Justice Department said he would not testify if the committee insisted that his lawyers question the Attorney General. rather than members of Congress.

DOJ officials told Fox News that they were "blinded" by the Democrats who announced this weekend that it would be the lawyers who would be asking Barr questions. The Deputy Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, Stephen Boyd, went to Capitol Hill Monday to try to fix the problem, but the problem has apparently not been solved.

It was announced to Fox News that Democrats in the House would vote on how to proceed on Wednesday and that the DOJ was considering the idea of ​​staff interviewing a practicing Cabinet member "off the table".

The president of the judiciary, Jerry Nadler, DN.Y., said that he would not compromise and that staff would interrogate Barr – and even threatened to arrest White House officials who did not comply with subpoenas – White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said on Tuesday that Congress "needs to calm down."

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"The Attorney General has agreed to appear before Congress. Therefore, the Congress proceeds with the interrogations, "said a DOJ official at Fox News, as the public's screeching continued.

"Attorney General Barr was not invited to testify before the committee – he offered," added a spokesman for the Judiciary Committee of the House of Republicans in a statement to Fox News. "He has voluntarily provided the Mueller report, he has invited Democratic leaders to personally consult the less redacted report, yet the only thing that will apparently satisfy the Democrats, who refuse to read the less-redacted report, is to pinch the staff when A representative of the cabinet appears before us. "

Barr's appearance in the Senate on Wednesday will take place on a more friendly ground, ahead of a Republican-led committee chaired by a close ally of the President, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Graham was waiting to be concerned that the beginnings of the FBI inquiry into Russia were tainted by bias on the part of law enforcement authorities against Trump.

Democrats are likely to focus on Barr's statements and actions that have pissed them off over the past six weeks. Relationships are tense given how Barr accelerated his confirmation process, garnering the support of a few Democrats and offering reassuring words about the independence of the Department of Justice and the importance of protection. from the inquiry of the special council.

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The first sign of dissatisfaction came last month when Barr issued a four-page statement summarizing his key findings of the Mueller report. In the letter, Barr revealed that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had released Mr. Trump from any obstruction of justice after Mueller and his team found evidence on both sides of the issue, without reaching a conclusion. .

Barr is likely to defend himself by noting how he himself published the report, even though he was not obliged to do so under the Special Counsel Regulation, and that in so doing he he undertook, during his confirmation hearing, to be as transparent as possible. the law allowed. Barr could say that he wanted to move quickly to provide the public with a summary of Mueller's key findings as the Justice Department spent weeks writing more sensitive information in the report.

After the publication of the letter, Barr raised new eyebrows when he testified before a congressional committee that he believed the Trump campaign had been spied on, given that the FBI had obtained a monitoring warrant secret to monitor the communications of members of the Trump team – partly on the basis of inaccurate and politically biased information.

Barr wondered if Mueller's investigation was a witch hunt, claiming that someone who felt wrongly accused would have reasonably considered an investigation in this manner. This has been a turnaround since his confirmation hearing, when he said that he did not believe that Mueller would ever be on a witch hunt.

A person familiar with Barr's thinking stated that Barr, a former CIA employee, did not mean espionage necessarily inappropriately and simply referred to intelligence-gathering activities.

Then the April 18 press conference was announced to announce the publication of the Mueller report later in the morning. This decision allowed him to become a heavy fist for progressives frustrated by Mueller's inability to find evidence linking the Trump team's collaboration with Russia.

Barr pointed out that Mueller's investigation had revealed no evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia, although the special advocate was quick to note in his report that "collusion" n & # 39 was not a legal term and also highlighted the many contacts between the campaign and Russia.

The Attorney General also commended the White House for giving Mueller's "unhindered access" to documents and witnesses, and suggested that the President had the right to to be bothered by the investigation, given his "sincere conviction that it undermined his political opponents chairmanship and fueled by illegal leaks".

On Tuesday, we still did not know if Barr would appear before the House committee. Nadler, the president of the judiciary of the House, said that witnesses could too easily make filibustering when they are questioned by legislators limited by a five-minute delay. Interviewing lawyers allows the committee to "dig a problem and pursue it," he said.

"And it's not the executive staff to tell the legislature how to handle our business," Nadler said.

The committee will vote on allowing staff to interview Barr at a separate meeting on Wednesday, at the same time Barr is answering Senate questions.

The representative of Georgia, Republican Doug Collins, strongly criticized the plan.

Nadler "took a voluntary audition and turned it into hobby," Collins said.

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"The Justice Department's position appears to be consistent with the Trump government's broader strategy of" undermining Congress as an institution, "said Elliot Williams, former Deputy Attorney General of the Legislative Affairs Office of the United States. ministry under the Obama administration, and as a Senate-appointed Senate Judiciary Committee Judicial Committee.

He stated that if he continued to advise a Attorney General, he would resist the idea that staff would interview a Cabinet official.

"It's a rational answer to not wanting them to question the Attorney General," Williams said.

Brooke Singman, FoxNews, Catherine Herridge, Bill Mears, Paige Dukeman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.