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The Judiciary Committee of the House goes "well beyond" with the terms of this week's hearing with Attorney General William Barr, Senator Lindsey Graham, R-C, said Monday.
Barr is about to testify about Special Advisor Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees this week, but his appearance before the House Committee is compromised by a disagreement about the parameters.
In an interview with Fox News, Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said his counterpart in the House, Representative Jerry Nadler, DN.Y., goes too far in demanding that Mr. Barr be members but also questions from the lawyer of each party in a second round of questions.
While the Department of Justice warned Nadler that Barr could withdraw from the hearing, Graham said, "I can understand his concern."
"What the House is doing goes well beyond that – Mueller is the last word," Graham said. "I fought like crazy to make sure Mueller could do his job without interference – I introduced a bill so that he could not be fired without cause."
Noting that Mueller had found no conspiracy between President Trump's 2016 campaign and the Kremlin, Graham added, "It's a political revenge." The House is on a witch hunt – a real hunt for witches to try to get something out of nothing. "
Trump has often referred to Mueller's investigation as "witch hunt".
Barr published a four-page summary of Mueller's report last month, a few days after the closing of the special advocate's investigation, stating that Mueller had found no evidence of conspiracy. The summary also quotes a partial quote from Mueller that he did not reach a conclusion as to whether or not Trump obstructed justice. Barr stated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had determined that no such crime had been committed.
Barr's summary was the subject of close scrutiny. After the redacted publication of Mueller's report, the New York Times published an analytical article comparing excerpts from Barr's summary to Mueller's findings. Critics criticized Barr's decision to hold a press conference as a ploy to support the findings of the special council and cited examples in the past where he had written summaries that they considered obscuring the truth.
Democrats rallied around the report, which exposes nearly a dozen cases of possible obstruction of justice and points out that the issue should be left to Congress, which should make it the cornerstone of the lawsuit investigations on the president.
Barr is due to testify Wednesday before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and Thursday before the Judiciary Committee of the House.
Despite Barr's opposition to answering the lawyers' questions, Nadler continues his plan.
"The witness is not going to tell the committee how to conduct his hearing, period," Nadler told CNN on Sunday. If Barr does not bow, Nadler said: "We will then have to summon him to appear, and we will have to use every possible means to enforce the subpoena."
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