A CNN legal analyst interjected during a Thursday panel on the network that a video that they played on the air of Attorney General William Barr’s testimony from last month did not depict the full context behind his comments.
The testimony in question, which now has a new relevancy, took place in front of the House Appropriations Committee on April 9.
WATCH:
Kate Bolduan aired a clip from Barr’s testimony in which he had a brief interaction with Democratic Florida Rep. Charlie Crist.
“Reports have emerged recently, General, that members of the special counsel’s team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they’re referencing with that?” Crist asked Barr.
Barr then answered by saying, “No, I don’t,” and CNN’s clip ended.
Bolduan proceeded to ask Asha Rangappa, “And then we know the letter came out that had already been sent to Bill Barr at that time, the letter we have recently seen from the special counsel himself, Asha, who said he was taking issue with the summaries that Bill Barr had been laying out. What do you make of this, Asha?”
She responded, “You know, at this point, I mean, I think — I agree with Michael, that he was trying to mislead and obfuscate really at every step. And, you know, I don’t know, I disagreed that his statement there doesn’t meet the threshold. At that point, we know that he had several contacts with the Mueller team and with Mueller himself indicating that they were displeased with the way he had put out his information.” (RELATED: Barr: DOJ Has ‘Multiple’ Leak Investigations Underway)
As Bolduan tried asking another panelist a question, former Mueller assistant Michael Zeldin stopped her and read Barr’s extended comment that was not shown.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election” on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 1, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
“The issue here is that in that clip, when Barr said, ‘No, I don’t,’ and then we ended it, he goes on to say, ‘but I suspect that they probably wanted more information to be released.’ So he continues his answer,” he stated. “It’s the continuation of that answer that I think undermines the possibility that this is a prosecutable offense.”
Many have suggested that Barr’s comment about not knowing why the special counsel’s office was “frustrated,” was a lie worthy of impeachment because it is now known that Mueller wrote a letter to him on March 27 where he expressed that his handling “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.” (RELATED: Full Text Of Mueller Letter Deflates Breathless Report)
Zeldin’s point was that Barr explaining that “they probably wanted more information to be released” would likely prevent his answer from rising to the level of impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Barr of lying to Congress and suggested that he committed a crime with these comments.