Did Obama officials commit treason? “Not as a legal matter,” Barr says

Tune in to “CBS This Morning” on Friday, May 31, for the full interview with Attorney General William Barr.

Attorney General William Barr said he does not think some Obama-era Justice Department officials who oversaw the Russia investigation committed treason.

“Not as a legal matter, no,” Barr told CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford when asked if he believed senior officials in the Obama administration committed treason, an accusation Mr. Trump has repeatedly made. 

Pressed on whether he had concerns about the way these officials conducted the investigation into Russian interference in U.S. elections and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow, the attorney general replied, “Yes.”

“Sometimes people can convince themselves that what they’re doing is in the higher interest and better good,” he said during an exclusive interview in Alaska on Thursday. “They don’t realize that what they’re doing is really antithetical to the democratic system that we have.”

After multiple calls by Mr. Trump to “investigate the investigators,” the attorney general earlier this month tapped the U.S. attorney in Connecticut to lead an investigation into the origins of the Russian inquiry. Last week, the president granted Barr sweeping powers to declassify counterintelligence information and ordered the nation’s intelligence agencies to cooperate with the attorney general’s review. 

The probe is the third one examining the Russia investigation. The U.S. attorney in Utah and the Justice Department’s inspector general have been investigating possible bias among Justice Department officials and whether government surveillance of the Trump campaign was appropriate. 

Asked about criticism he has faced from Democrats and former government officials for saying the Trump campaign was “spied on” by federal investigators, Barr rejected the idea that “spying” is a “dirty word.”

“I think there is nothing wrong with spying,” he said. “The question is always whether it is authorized by law and properly predicated, and if it is, then it is an important tool the United States has to protect the country.” 

During the interview Thursday, Barr also said special counsel Robert Mueller could have reached a decision on whether the president committed obstruction of justice, regardless of long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.