Democrats immediately accused Mr. Barr of making overtly political decisions to help Mr. Trump. “You have aided and abetted the worst failings of the president,” Representative Jerrold R. Nadler of New York, the committee chairman, said to Mr. Barr, who sat impassively.
Mr. Nadler added, “The message these actions send is clear: In this Justice Department, the president’s enemies will be punished and his friends will be protected, no matter the cost to liberty, no matter the cost to justice.” He said that Mr. Barr’s actions eroded the separation of powers and damaged norms and the public’s faith in the administration of justice.
Mr. Barr came out swinging. In a prepared opening statement released a night earlier, he accused Democrats of demonizing him because he believed the Trump-Russia investigation was misguided.
He also warned that “violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction” in places like Portland, Ore.
In his prepared statement, which he did not fully read aloud, Mr. Barr said: “We should all be able to agree that there is no place in this country for armed mobs that seek to establish autonomous zones beyond government control, or tear down statues and monuments that law-abiding communities chose to erect, or to destroy the property and livelihoods of innocent business owners.”
His comments were the latest attempt by federal officials to draw more attention to vandals’ nightly bids to damage federal buildings in Portland, accusing local police of doing little to stop them. City officials
have accused federal agents of being heavy-handed and said their presence reinvigorated tensions that had been subsiding.
The attorney general appears to have played a primary role in using federal agents to
violently clear protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House last month before a photo opportunity for Mr. Trump in front of a church. Though the White House initially said Mr. Barr had ordered the clearance, he later said he had not given a “tactical” order. Either way, Democrats were livid over his presence and have come to see Mr. Barr as a key impediment to overhauls of policing that enjoy broad public support.
More recently, he has become a face of the Trump administration’s pledge to surge federal agents into Democratic-led cities like Portland, Ore.; Chicago; and Kansas City, Mo. where, the White House says, violence has increased, both during protests and elsewhere. The federal intervention — the details of which remain hazy — is quickly becoming another flash point in the monthslong cultural reckoning over systemic racism, and it appears to be a key campaign strategy by Mr. Trump who is trying to stoke a sense that Democrats are leading the country into chaos. Exchanges between Mr. Barr and Democrats grew contentious.
The hearing grew increasingly combative as the hours wore on. Democrat after Democrat posed questions to Mr. Barr only to cut him off when he tried to reply, substituting their own replies for his.
Clearly frustrated, Mr. Barr complained at one point: “This is a hearing. I thought I was the one who was supposed to be heard.” At another point, after being reminded he was under oath, he insisted, “I’m going to answer the damn question.”
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the leading Republican on the committee, repeatedly complained that the Democrats were subjecting the attorney general to verbal abuse. “I do not think we have ever had a hearing where the witness was not allowed to respond to points made, questions asked, and attacks made,” he said.
In one testy exchange, Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, demanded of Mr. Barr: “Do you think it was appropriate at Lafayette Park to pepper spray, tear gas and beat protesters and injure American citizens?”
When he countered that he did not accept her characterization, she broke in, asking sternly: “Mr. Barr, yes or no? I am starting to lose my temper.” Democrats criticized Mr. Barr’s intervention in the Roger Stone case.
Democrats attacked Mr. Barr’s intervention to
recommend a shorter prison sentence for Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felony crimes — a sentence
Mr. Trump has since commuted.
Mr. Barr defended his extraordinary decision to overrule career prosecutors, saying that they were trying to treat Mr. Stone more harshly than other defendants. The Judiciary Committee
heard testimony from a prosecutor on the case last month accusing department leaders of changing the sentencing recommendation for “political reasons.”
“The prosecutors were trying to advocate for a sentence that was more than twice what anyone else in a similar position had ever served,” Mr. Barr said. “This is a 67-year-old man, first-time offender, no violence, they were trying to put them in jail for seven to nine years. I was not going to advocate that. That is not the rule of law.”
snipped picture: The president has commuted the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted of seven felony counts.
But the prosecutors said in court that they arrived at the seven- to nine-year recommendation by following the department’s own sentencing guidelines, as is customary in any federal criminal case. Questioned by the federal judge who oversaw the Stone case, department officials acknowledged that it was the policy of the United States attorney’s office to seek the harshest possible sentence under the sentencing guidelines and to let the judge decide whether it was warranted. She questioned why the Justice Department treated Mr. Stone more leniently than other defendants.
Under questioning by Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, Mr. Barr agreed that the prosecutors’ recommendation was within sentencing guidelines. “But it was not within Justice Department policy in my view,” he said.
In an especially heated exchange, Mr. Johnson retorted: “You are expecting the American people to believe that you did not do what Trump wanted you to do? You think the American people don’t understand that you were carrying out Trump’s” wishes?
“Let me ask you,” Mr. Barr replied. “Do you think it is fair for a 67-year-old man to be sent to prison for seven to nine years?” He insisted that he never discussed his decision to overrule Mr. Stone’s prosecutors with anyone at the White House.
video transcript: Heated Exchange: During Barr’s Testimony Over Roger Stone Case
Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia questioned Attorney General William P. Barr about his intervention to recommend a shorter prison sentence for President Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr.
“Attorney General Barr, you’re expecting the American people to believe that you did not do what Trump wanted you to do when you changed that sentencing recommendation, and lowered it for Roger Stone? You think the American people don’t understand that you were carrying out Trump’s —”
“I was not.”
“— will?”
“I had not discussed my sentencing recommendation with anyone at the White House —”
“The president —”
“— or anyone outside the department.”
“— what the president wanted you to do. And that’s what you did.”
“No!”
“Attorney General —”
“Let me ask you, do you think it’s fair — do you think it is fair for a 67-year-old man to be sent to prison for seven to nine years?”
“It was in accordance with the sentencing.”
“No, it was not.”
“You just said that it was, and your line prosecutors will testify that it was also. Now, I’m going to move on from that —”
“The department —”
“In your time as attorney general —”
“It is not the department —”
“— under Herbert Walker Bush you never changed the sentencing recommendation for a friend of Herbert Walker Bush did you?”
“No as I recall —”
“All right. No. And over the course of your time as Trump —”
“Nothing was ever elevated to me.”
“Over the course of your tenure with Trump, you’ve changed two sentencing recommendations. Not one, but two.”
Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida, later asked Mr. Barr repeatedly if he would point to any other case where the department had recommended a more lenient punishment than the guidelines set out for a defendant like Mr. Stone, who had threatened a judge and a witness.
Mr. Barr did not answer directly, insisting that “the judge agreed with me” and gave Mr. Stone a lighter sentence.
Mr. Deutch was displeased. “The essence of the rule of law is that we have one rule for everybody and we don’t in this case because he is a friend of the president,” he said.
Republicans and Democrats played videos to make competing points about protests.
picture: Protesters in Portland, Ore., face off with federal agents early Tuesday.
Republicans had counterpunches of their own. Their most visceral case came in the form of a five-minute
video montage that appeared to show protesters or people infiltrating their ranks across the country turning to violence.
“I want to thank you for defending law enforcement, for pointing out what a crazy idea the defund the police policy, whatever you want to call it, is, and standing up for the rule of law,” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the panel’s top Republican, told Mr. Barr before playing the video. It began with footage of cable news anchors describing the protests as “peaceful” before streaming through scenes like a police precinct being set ablaze in Minneapolis, American flags burning, cans being hurled at police and stores looted.
While some protesters have been violent,
many others have been peaceful and have included high school students, military veterans, off-duty lawyers and lines of mothers who call themselves the “Wall of Moms.”
The video that Mr. Jordan played omitted instances where federal agents, who arrived in the city on July 4, had
responded aggressively and sometimes with disproportionate force through the use of tear gas, and flash bangs and pepper balls.
Video shows that in some cases, agents attacked protesters when there was
no apparent threat, including the case of
a Navy veteran whose hands were smashed by officers.
In the afternoon, Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, grilled Mr. Barr about instances in which peaceful protesters were injured or subjected to tear gas.
“I want to let you see now a video that fairly represents peaceful protest that is happening now across America that you conveniently omitted from your testimony and your statement,” Mr. Cicilline said. He showed a video featuring footage of demonstrators kneeling and holding their arms aloft as they chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
<h2 class="css-1aoo5yy eoo0vm40" id="link-a80ff96">Mr. Barr repeated false claims that the president has made.
Throughout the hearing, Mr. Barr repeated several false claims first promoted by the president on issues including police killings and the coronavirus response.
Mr. Barr cited
statistics compiled by the Washington Post to compare the number of unarmed Black men killed by police (eight) to the number of unarmed white men killed by police (11) this year. It was an echo of Mr. Trump’s technically accurate but misleading
claim that “more white” Americans are killed by police than Black Americans. The Post also noted that Black Americans are killed at more than twice the rate as white Americans, when factoring in population size.
He claimed that 90 percent of Black murder victims are killed by Black perpetrators, which is accurate but omits that murder victims and perpetrators are
overwhelmingly of the same race. Mr. Trump stirred controversy in 2015 when he tweeted false statistics
promoting the point.
Under questioning about the government’s coronavirus response, Mr. Barr defended Mr. Trump by also
falsely blaming former “President Obama’s mishandling” of the Centers for Disease and Prevention for testing shortages and a “run down” Strategic National Stockpile.
The first claim was a reference to a 2014 draft policy on laboratory-developed tests that was never finalized or enforced. (The Justice Department plays no role in procuring and distributing tests.) The stockpile, which is the federal government’s repository of medicines and medicinal products, contained more than $7 billion worth of supplies with Mr. Trump took office and had more than
16,660 ventilators available when the pandemic began.
Mr. Barr’s description of protests in Washington’s Lafayette Square last month and the federal response also
mirrored that of Mr. Trump and his White House press secretary. St. John’s Church “was on fire,” the attorney general said of a small fire in the basement. And he misleadingly insisted that “no tear gas was used,” though the United States Park Police
confirmed “the use of smoke canisters and pepper balls.”
Mr. Barr was questioned about his warning of widespread voter fraud.
As states prepare for record numbers of voters to cast ballots this fall by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Barr has provided key backup to Mr. Trump’s claims of rampant fraud. Democrats fear their comments are intended to or will at least have the effect of suppressing voter turnout or limiting access to the ballot box.
After Mr. Trump attacked efforts to expand mail-in voting during the pandemic and claimed it would be used to rig the election against him — even though the president has voted by mail himself — Mr. Barr has repeatedly raised without evidence, including in interviews with
The New York Times and
Fox News, the suggestion that a foreign country could engage in fraud by counterfeiting numerous ballots.
Experts say that a foreign-sponsored plot to systematically
tamper with ballots is nearly impossible because of how they are printed and tracked. Many states have been conducting elections by mail for years without any major security problems or widespread fraud.
At the hearing, Representative Cedric Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, asked Mr. Barr whether he believed the 2020 election would be rigged. The attorney general said he had no reason to think it would be. Mr. Richmond then followed up by asking whether he believed that mail-in voting would lead to massive voter fraud.
“I think there is a high risk that it will,” Mr. Barr replied, adding: “If you have wholesale mail-in voting, it increases the risk of fraud.”
Mr. Barr did not explain further, and Mr. Richmond did not ask him whether any evidence existed supporting his earlier claims that foreign governments could counterfeit and mail in tens of thousands of ballots. But the lawmakers did get Mr. Barr to acknowledge that he had once cast a ballot by mail himself.
