Schiff says Barr “deliberately” misleading public is “serious business”

“After getting now two or three misleading summaries from the Justice Department through the attorney general, I don’t think we can rely on the Justice Department to be summarizing what Bob Mueller said in that conversation to Bill Barr,” Schiff said.

Barr was pressed during earlier testimony in April about Mueller’s reservations on the summary of the report, to which he told lawmakers he was not aware of such concerns. But now, CBS News has confirmed that Mueller in fact wrote a letter to the attorney general, expressing his concerns and later had a “cordial and professional conversation” regarding the summary, according to the Justice Department.

In the letter, Mueller told Barr his message to Congress “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s views on obstruction of justice.

“I think his statement is deliberately false and misleading and yes, most people would consider that to be a lie,” Schiff said. “He’s a very smart man, he knew exactly he was being asked by Congress and he knew his answer was false.”

Schiff now says that Barr should step down in light of the contradicting statements, saying it’s “hard for the country to have confidence” in the nation’s top litigator “if he’s asked a direct question as he was and he gives a directly false answer.”

While Barr is likely to face intense grilling by Senate lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee, Schiff said Congress’ job at Wednesday’s hearing is to “get to bottom of Barr’s misrepresentations” as well as the fundamental issue of why Barr felt it necessary to produce his own assessment on the charge of obstruction of justice.

“We suspected before we got the report that Mueller produced his own summary, so why did Barr feel it necessary to create his own summary to help the White House in this way and now we know not only did those summaries exist but Mueller pleaded with him to to release it to the public,” said Schiff.

Schiff added that instead of leaving the issue of assessing the obstruction claim to Congress, “he chose to be the personal lawyer for the president instead.”