Trump slams Democrats’ treatment of William Barr as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden demand Attorney General quits
DONALD Trump has blasted Democrats calling for Attorney General William Barr's resignation after he allegedly spun the conclusions of the Mueller report in the president's favour.
The US president praised Barr's performance during a four-hour long Senate hearing yesterday, saying "he did a fantastic job" before criticising the "abuse" he received regarding the Russia probe.
He lashed out at "abuse" aimed at Barr from the likes of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Democrats running for president in 2020, including Joe Biden.
Barr, the president's chief lawyer, faces a backlash over his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether Russia colluded with Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
His official summary of the report allegedly "threatened to undermine" the inquiry, which had been widened to look into whether the Trump administration worked to obstruct the investigation.
It sparked a row with Mueller himself, who issued a damning statement slamming the "confusing" way the attorney general characterised the report.
A number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have called for Barr to resign.
You have three of them running against me and they're up there ranting and raving like lunatics, frankly, and they're running, and how is that fair?
President Trump
Former vice president Joe Biden, and senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar were among them.
Hillary Clinton also piled in, saying Barr was acting as "the president's defence lawyer" instead of the nation's top law enforcer.
Trump dismissed the calls for Barr's head as "ridiculous" during an interview with Fox Business yesterday.
He said: "He's an outstanding man, he's an outstanding legal mind. He performed incredibly well today.
"He did a fantastic job today, I'm told. I got to see some of it. He did a fantastic job."
Turning on the Democrats, he added: "You have three of them running against me and they're up there ranting and raving like lunatics, frankly, and they're running, and how is that fair?
"So you have Bill Barr, highly respected, great attorney general, and he's got to take the abuse from people that are running for office."
As tensions boiled over, Mueller had communicated his agitation in a letter to the Justice Department just days after Barr issued a four-page document to Congress that summarised his probe.
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Mueller and Barr then had a phone call where the same concerns were addressed, it has been reported.
The letter lays bare simmering tensions between the Justice Department and the special counsel about whether Barr's summary adequately conveyed the gravity of Mueller's findings.
The revelation is likely to sharpen attacks by Democrats who accuse Barr of unduly protecting the president and of spinning Mueller's conclusions in Trump's favour.
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