insoles team are for are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your march twenty fourth letter in that they don't adequately or accurately portray the report's findings i don't know what members he's talking about i don't i and i and i certainly am not aware of any challenge to the accuracy of the findings mr are. you seeing of learn the filibuster rules even better than senators do i question was why did you say you were not aware of concerns when weeks before your test when it mr moore and i expressed concerns to you that's a fairly simple well answered a question and the question was relating to an identified members who were expressing frustration over the accuracy relating to findings i don't know what that refers to at all i talked directly to bob mahler not members of his team and

even though i did not know what was being referred to and had and muller had never told me that that my if that the expression of the findings was inaccurate but i did then volunteer that i thought they were talking about the desire to have more information but out but it wasn't my purpose to put out more information are your i feel on the answer is purposely misleading and i think others do too. i may ask for another one. you said the president is fully cooperated with the investigation. but his attorney had told the defendant he'd be taken care of they didn't cooperate in this case is there a conflict. i'm sorry could you just repeat history of ford mr coroner told by trans person attorney be taken care of. if they. did not

cooperate you said that the president was falling for. conflict there. yes or no now. you think it's four o'clock very destructive a former aide to tell the jury general under a kid from south shut down the investigation and declare the president did nothing wrong i don't think well i basically since i didn't find it what it was obstruction i felt that the evidence could not support and the matter is that is fully cooperating. and i ask you as instruction is that poly cooperated if he fully cooperated so by instructor and former aide to tell the truth he general under. investigation and you clear the president did nothing wrong that's fully cooperate in the report that is on. him to page five on june nineteenth twenty seventeen the president picked this message. or house could have

a session of the best and said this session it's a public announcement the number saved in the rest investigation investigation very unfair to the president president done nothing wrong right ok so far pretty well firstly asking sessions to on recuse himself i do not think is a national election where the president did nothing wrong i'm not asked to answer obstruction or he well i don't know if that declares the president did nothing wrong although the president in terms of collusion did nothing wrong isn't that correct. closures on crime it's. obstructing but is that only cooperate to say that well. i don't see any conflict between that and fully cooperating with the investigation the. president of course cleared many times publicly and tweets and. campaign rallies and all that he would testify for it but

he never did testify or act. as far as i know. but i think you know whether he testified as far as i know he didn't testify and mr ball are found the written answers to be and that is that correct. i think he wanted additional but he never sought it. and the president never told he never he never pushed it the president never tested. the fact that mr ball are found the trump campaign was receptive to some of the offers of assistance from russia for the fact that the trump campaign never reported that they had this . does that trouble you what would they report to the f.b.i. they receptive to offers of assistance from russia what do you mean by receptive i think the report says you know obviously. it obviously they were they were

expecting to benefit from whatever the russians on seventy three are and one reports and in some investigations the bulk only would trump him and fish and then it was time the russian government those links included pressure off them systems. in some instances campaign was receptive to start wars others have been ott. well i've gone you know well i have to understand exactly what that refers to what what what communications that referred to the u.n. report i just gave you a report i know my time is up and make a gentleman nervous no this is very well done. so according to. general barr the chairman has pointed out that after the hillary clinton e-mail investigation there were a number of mr coleman's press conference i think of july the fifth roughly two thousand and sixteen there are

a number of prominent democratic members of the senate who said that komi should be should resign. or be fired. i believe you said that you've concluded as a matter of law that the president as the head of the executive branch of government has the right to fire executive branch employees was that correct that's right in this case the president was relying at least in part on a recommendation by the deputy attorney general rosenstein arising out of rosenstein critique of mr combs conduct in holding that press conference releasing derogatory information about secretary clinton but then announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against her is that right that's right . you started your career i believe in the intelligence community and then moved on of course to

the department of justice and thank you for agreeing to serve again as attorney general and help restore the department's reputation as an impartial arbiter of the law and not as of the political arm of any administration i think that's very very important that you and director ray continue your efforts in that regard and i'm grateful to you for that but i do believe that we need to ask the question why didn't the obama administration do more as early as two thousand and fourteen and invest again russian efforts to prepare to undermine and so dissension in the two thousand and sixteen election mr modes report does document that the. russian government through the intelligence through their intelligence agencies and their internet research are ira i think it's called begin as early as two thousand

and fourteen began their efforts to do so and we know they met with some success is it any surprise to you based on your experience that the russians would try to do everything they can to so dissension in american political life including in our elections no not at all i mean i think the internet. creates a lot more opportunities to to have a you know to have that kind of covert effect on american body politic so it's getting more and more dangerous but the russians have been at this for a long time in various different ways but the point you made about. bob mahler's efforts on ira it's one of the things that struck me about the report i think it's very impressive work that they did and moving quickly to get into the to get into

the ira and also the g.r.u. folks and i was thinking to myself if that had been done in two thousand you know starting in the beginning of two thousand and sixteen we would have been a lot further along for example we've heard a lot about the steel dossier mr steele of course is a former british intelligence officer hired by to do opposition research by the hillary clinton campaign on on her political adversaries including president trump for candidate trump at that time how do we know that the steel dossier is not itself evidence of russian descent from asian campaign knowing what we know now that basically the allegations made in there and were secondhand here is say or unverified. state with confidence that the russians that the steel dossier was not part of the russian descent from asian campaign no i can't state that with

confidence and that is one of the areas that i am reviewing i'm concerned about it in it and i don't think it's entirely speculative. what we know that from published reports that the head of the cia mr brennan the went to president obama and brought his concerns about the initial indications are russian involvement in the campaign as early as the late of july late july two thousand and sixteen and instead of doing more during the obama administration to look into that and disrupt and deter russian activities that threatened the validity and integrity of our campaign in two thousand and sixteen it appears to me that. the obama administration justice department and f.b.i. decided to place their bets on hillary clinton and focus their efforts on

investigating the trump campaign but as you have pointed out thanks to the general thanks to the special counsel we now have confidence that no americans colluded with the russians in their effort to undermine the american people we now need to know and i'm glad to hear what you are telling us about your inquiries and your research in your investigation we now need to know what steps the obama f.b.i. department of justice and intelligence community what steps they took to undermine the political process and put a thumb on the scale in favor of one political candidate over the other and that would be before and after the the two thousand and sixteen election. what's the defense of briefing that in a counterintelligence investigation well you can have different kinds of defensive briefings. if if you learn that somebody is being targeted by

a hostile intelligence service then one form of in defense of briefing is to go and to alert that person to the risks i think attorney general lynch has said it would it is routine in counterintelligence investigations would you agree with her yes you know whether a defense or briefing ever given to the truck campaign by the f.b.i. based on their counterintelligence investigation did they ever tell the president before he was. january two thousand and seventeen what the russians were trying to do and advise him to tell people to leave this campaign to be on their guard and be vigilant about russian efforts to undermine public confidence in the election my understanding is that didn't happen that would be an extra that failure to put provided defense or briefing to the trunk campaign that would be an extraordinary or notable failure or would you agree i think under these circumstances one of the

things that i can't fathom why it why it did not happen if you're concerned about interference in the election. and you have you know substantial people involved in the campaign who are former u.s. attorneys who had three former u.s. attorneys there. in the campaign i don't understand why the bureau would not have gone in and given a defense of briefing and so durban. thanks mr chairman thanks general barr i've been listening carefully to my republican colleagues on the other side in the peers that they are going to work together and coordinate the so-called luck corrupt defense this is really not supposed to be about the motor investigation the russian involvement in the election the trump campaign and so forth is really about hillary clinton's e-mails finally we get down to the bottom line. hillary clinton's e-mails questions have to be asked about and gazi along the way what about travelgate what it whitewater there's

a lot of material we should be going through today according to their response to this that is totally unresponsive to the reality of what the american people want to know they paid a lot of money twenty five million dollars for this report and i respect mr mueller and believe he came up with a sound report though i don't agree with all of it but i find general barr that some of the things that you've been gauged in really leave me wondering what you believe your role as attorney general is when it comes to something like this listen to what this incident put in the record let me read it listen to what you received in a letter on march twenty seventh from bob mueller the summerlin of the department sent to congress and least the public late me afternoon march twenty fourth did not fully capture of the context nature and substance of the offices work and conclusions we communicated that concern to the department on the morning of march twenty fifth there is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation this threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed the special counsel to assure

full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations i can't imagine that you received that letter in march twenty fourth and could not answer congressman chris directly when he asked you whether there were concerns about representations being made on these findings by the people working for bob mueller you said no i don't know after you receive this letter what am i missing well as i explained to explain to senator leahy i talk directly. bob and bob told me that he did not have objections to the accuracy attorneys don't put things in writing unless they're pretty serious about them there's an old rule in politics a good politician doesn't write a letter and doesn't throw want to weigh affairs are going to ask if he puts it in writing of his concerns or your representations on march twenty fourth you couldn't recall that when congressman chris asked you that question a few days later no i'm saying that this was the. the march twenty

fourth letter stated that bob mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction and it had the language in there about not exonerating the president. my view of events was that there was a lot of criticism of the special counsel for the ensuing few days and on thursday i got i got this letter. and when i talked to the special counsel about the letter my understanding was his concern was not the accuracy of the statement of the findings in my letter but that he wanted more out there to provide additional context to explain his reasoning and why he didn't reach a decision on obstruction. i'll just say this mr gore if you received a letter from bob miller a few days after your march twenty fourth letter it was clear he had some genuine

genuine concerns about what you had said and done to that point can we move to another topic of his concerns was he wanted more add and i would have knowledge eyes at this. my job you know after and after i'm you know months long trial if if i wanted to go out and get out to the public what the verdict was pending preparation of the full transcript and i'm out there saying here's the verdicts and the prosecutor comes up and taps me on the shoulder says well the verdict doesn't really fully capture all my work about that great you know cross-examination i did or how about that third day of trial or i did that this doesn't capture everything my answer to that is i'm not trying to capture everything i'm just trying to state the verdict no you just absolutely used the word summarized though in your letter summarize the principle conclusions will conclusions which most people would view as a summary but let me move to another topic if i can for a minute the office of legal counsel's decision as to whether or not you can press q a sitting president you had some pretty strong feelings that they were reflected

in your volunteered memo to the trump defense team your one thousand page memo that i discussed that you certainly discussed whether or not a president should cooperate with an investigation you said at one point and summarizing the findings of muller that the white house fully cooperated we know for a fact and you've stated already the president never submitted himself to what was characterized as a vital interview. an actual sit down interview under oath not once and that is questions that there were answered some thirty times his memory failed him so do to say the white house fully cooperated that i think is a general's generous conclusion on this office of legal counsel i would refer you to this volume two of the most important and on page one he talks about the whole issue of whether or not he was in any way restricted. and what he could conclude because of the pen or the outstanding office of legal counsel

opinion on the liability of a sitting president you dismissed that in your opening statement and said we asked him two or three times he said that that had nothing to do with it well how do you explain on the first page of volume two that he says it had a lot to do with it it's a reason he couldn't reach a binary conclusion on obstruction of justice and well no it was a prevention a raise and one of the backdrop. factors that he cited as influencing his prevent szell judgment that he should not reach a decision which is different than citing the l.l.c. as saying that but for the o.l. see opinion i wouldn't die i'm just going to stand by what he has written and i ask others to read it as well the last point i want to make is about done mcgann if you read the section here one hundred pages hundred thirteen one hundred twenty on done against experience the president wanted him to state publicly that the new york times article was it was untrue that he had not asked mcgann to fire the special

counsel mccann refused and there's some speculation as to whether he risked being dismissed or even resigning over this issue and for you to suggest that this was some sort of a kabuki dance with rob rosenstein i think the president's intent here was very clear he wanted this to end he told lester holt going back to the issue that was raised by the chairman earlier here the reason to get rid of komi is because the russian investigation i mean over and over again this president was very explicit and it certainly is very exposed to her in style so i don't understand i mean as to this conclusion my time is up do you have any objections can you think of an objection of why don began should he come testify before this committee about his experience. yes i mean i think that he's a close adviser to the president ever president whoever exerted executive privilege excuse me may have already waived his now we haven't waived executive privilege well at this point do you believe you're saying don what about bob mueller should

he be allowed to testify before this i've already said publicly i have no objection to him and done mcgann should he be allowed to testify. that's a call for the president to make all these private citizen of this point and will well i assume he'd be testifying about privilege matters well i would hope that we could get to the bottom of this with actual testimony of witnesses after we take a mother close look to hillary clinton's e-mails thank you. we might do that. certainly. in his classic dissent in morrison the olson justice scalia remarked that nothing is so politically effective as the ability to charge that one's opponent and his associates are not merely wrong headed naive and ineffective but in all probability crooks and nothing so effectively gives an appearance of validity to such charges as a justice department investigation and that observation has i think been borne out time and time again over the past two years at

a time and time again. the president's political adversaries have exploited the moeller pro it's mere existence to spread baseless innuendo in an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the twenty sixteen election and the effectiveness of this administration for example on january twenty fifth two thousand one thousand speaker nancy pelosi asked what does putin have on the president politically personally or financially. mr attorney general is there any evidence to suggest that flight amir putin quote unquote has something on president trump no nama where of one february twentieth twenty one thousand former f.b.i. . deputy director andrew mccabe said on national television to the entire nation that he thinks it's possible that donald trump is a russian agent mr attorney general is there any evidence that you're aware of that

suggests even remotely the president trump is a russian agent nama aware of representative eric swalwell has repeatedly claimed that donald trump quote acts on russia's behalf attorney general or is there anything you're aware of to back that up by way of evidence that the president acts on russia's behalf none that i'm aware of so basically we've heard over and over again on national t.v. in committee hearings on the house and senate floor. and in the media and we heard about the president's alleged collusion with russia. but what we have heard is as baseless as any conspiracy theory that we've seen in politics any that i can think of the only difference here is that the per verus of this conspiracy were in many cases prominent members of the opposition party that's

concerning. now from the beginning there were some indications that the russian investigators and was perhaps not always conducted with the absolute impartiality at the american people should expect and have come to hope to find an existence within the department of justice as personally given that the track record of excellence that the u.s. department of justice has shown according to the report itself. the investigation into the truck campaign began on july thirty first twenty sixteen after a foreign government contacted the f.b.i. about comments made by george up of apple us is that accurate or were there other precipitating events that helped lead to this. that is that is the account that is has been given in the past as to how it got go. you've previously said that you think it's possible that the federal bureau of investigation improperly spied on

the trump campaign i assume that's a reference to the five so warrant for carter page is that what you have in mind or are there other circumstances that you've got in mind there one of the things i want to look at there are people many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single. confidential informant and a pfizer warrant i'd like to find out whether that is in fact true it strikes me as a fairly and me make effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented was cover page under surveillance during his time working for the trump campaign which was roughly january twenty sixth seemed to september twenty sixth i don't know. what was any other trump campaign official under surveillance during that time period to your knowledge well that these are the things that i need to to look at and i have to say that as i said

before you know the extent that there was any overreach i believe it was. a few people in the in the upper echelons of the bureau and perhaps the department. but those people are no longer there and i'm working closely with chris right to life think has done a superb job at the bureau and we're working together on trying to reconstruct exactly what went down one thing people should know is that the bureau itself has been a little bit handicapped in looking back because of the pending moeller investigation and ellijay investigation. as we know the pfizer warrant for carter page was based largely on the so-called steel dossier and in particular on two specific facts. about page's trip to moscow to deliver a speech in july two thousand and sixteen first according to the warrant page had

a secret meeting with igor session the president of rosneft is the more report confirm that page met with session. i. met with who with with mr mr session with igor said i can't i can't i can't recall but i don't remember that let me just say that i want to stay away from getting too deeply into the. the pfizer issue because that's currently under investigation by the o. i j understood. second and more importantly that the warrant also says that paige met with with igor. in order to discuss what is referred to as compromise that involving hillary clinton against hillary clinton. does the more report confirm that page met with that yeah i don't think so. is a confirm that page discussed compromise on hillary clinton with anyone not that i recall so since the main evidentiary support for the warrant has been discussed by

the moeller report which is sort of the gold standard of what we're discussing here i'm glad that you're looking into it i'd encourage you to look into why the f.b.i. relied on this false information and i hope you'll share the results of the public obviously has a right to know what happened here the u.s. department of justice the federal bureau of investigation have a long history and a long history of success that has been based on respect. they deserve to understand that there is not so much power that's been concentrated in that one agency that the outcome of a of an investigation and depend on the whims of who might be assigned to it they have a right not to believe that a particular investigation might be struck and paged might not be tarmac to night but might not be influenced by an improper consideration politically or otherwise thank you mr attorney general. senator whitehouse told have to those began eleven

forty five will do senator whitehouse and why don't we just come back. an hour later will break break for an hour and do those and have lunch so a white house thank you chairman attorney general you had a conversation with chairman graham earlier this morning which you describe the importance of to use chairman graham's words hardening our electoral infrastructure against foreign election interference i ask you is anonymous election funding an avenue for possible for an election influence and interference yes. let's turn to the march twenty seventh letter which you received and read march twenty eighth the mahler letter. correct yes. when did you have the conversation with bob mueller about that letter that you've referenced i think was

on the twenty eighth same day that you read it. when did you first learn of the new york times and washington post stories that would make the existence of this letter public the ones that came out last night i think it could have been yesterday but i'm not sure when they contacted you to ask for any comment in contact me contact to d.o.j. to ask for any comment. i can't actually remember how it came up but someone mentioned it so you at some point you knew that the mullah letter was going to become public and that was probably yesterday i think so ok when did you decide to make that letter available to us in congress this morning. would you concede that you had an opportunity to make this letter public on april fourth when representative chris to ask you a very related question. i don't know which made by related question is me be

a very different question. i can't even follow that down the road that i mean oyo. that's a masterful hairsplitting. v. letter references enclosed documents and enclosed materials right are those the same things as what you called the executive summaries that muller provided you with this letter yes yes it's all the same document i'm sorry what did you all talk about the executive summary is that mahler provided you they are the documents that were the enclosed documents with that letter which we have not been provided i think they were. the have been provided them there in the report. the summaries in the report it's the language of the report in the report there's nothing else to be provided you that i think that's what he

provided ok if there is anything else where you provided to us if it's different any form it's odd to be given a letter without the attachments to it when the attached i think that i think they were letter back did versions of the we get out of summaries that are embedded in the report we get that just to be sure. sure great thank you. you agree that none of that material was either grand jury six or presented a risk to. intelligence sources and methods or would interfere or compromise ongoing investigation or affected were affected by executive privilege there were redactions made in the. executive summaries the as i said i was an interest in putting out summaries period well you know when and frankly it's another hair splitting exercise because bob mueller who i think we all agree is fairly credible actually described your letter as a summary so you can say it wasn't a summary but muller said it was a summary and i don't think i wasn't i wasn't interested in summarizing the whole report as i say i was stating that the bottom line conclusions of the report your

letter and i sense that it's intended to describe i quote your words. the reporting volume one delane you did as i don't report in four pages and it's a four hundred page report i don't know why you're caviling about whether as i summary as i stayed in the letter that i'm stating that the principal conclusions. let me also say that you know bob mahler is the equivalent of a u.s. attorney he was exercising the powers of the attorney general subject to the supervision of the attorney general he's part of the department of justice his work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general. at that point it was my baby and i was making a decision as to whether or not to make it public and i effectively overrode the regulations use discretion to to lean as far forward as i could could to make that public and was my decision how and when to make it public not mahler's with respect

to the o l c opinion that informed bob miller's decision as he describes in the report. do you agree that that is merely an executive opinion and that under our constitution the decision as to what the law is is made by the judicial branch of the united states government i'm sorry could you with respect to the o.l. see opinion that informed mahler's decision not to make a recommendation on obstruction as he said in his report do you concede that that is an executive opinion and that under our constitutional system what the law is gets decided by the judicial branch of government yes is there any way for the oil sees opinion to be tested by the judicial branch of government to see if it's correct or not none that comes to mind and it could be wrong could it not. i guess hypothetically could be wrong and certainly there are usually i get it right legal minds the disagree with it correct me there are many respected legal commentators

and professors and lawyers who disagree with it correct it's very hard to find lawyers that agree to. on anything so the interesting thing to me is that it goes on to say that because of the all see opinion we have to give the president and extra benefit of the doubt because he has denied his day in court where he could exonerate himself. that seems like a fallacy to me because if you're the president of the united states you can either wave or readily override the o l c opinion and say i'm ready to go to trial i'm want to exonerate myself let's go could you not how is this relevant to my decisions. it's irrelevant because i assume that there was no opinion well we have a report in front of us that says that this influenced the outcome. and in particular it says it influenced the outcome because it deprived the president of his ability

to have his day in court and my point to you is that the president could easily have his day in court by simply waiving or overriding this oh well see opinion that has no judicial basis correct. well i don't i don't think that there was anything to have a day in court on i don't i think that the government did not have a prosecutable case but part well mahler obviously didn't agree because see now that's left that up to you whether he said that he could neither confirm nor deny that there was a prosecutable case here he left that to you and when he did he said and you apparently have agreed that this oh well see opinion bear isn't it in there would be unfair to the president to put him to the burden of being indicted not having the ability to be charged i don't want to characterize absolve have bob's thought process on that i'm not asking you to characterize it it's in the it's in his report he's put it right not sure what he means it by that and the reporter. with

respect to the word. and i have a minute i just want to nail down you used the word spying. about authorized d.o.j. investigative activities are you talking about my testimony by the house appropriations yes in the entirety of your previous career in the department of justice including as attorney general have you ever referred to authorized department investigative activities officially or publicly as spying i'm not asking for private conversations i'm not going to i'm a juror the use of the word spying i think you know my first job was in cia i don't think the word spying has any pejorative connotation a role to meet us you know i made it a question is always whether or not it's authorized and what and adequately predicated spying i think spying is a good english word that in fact doesn't have synonyms because it is the broadest

word in incorporating really all forms of covert intelligence collection so i'm not going to back off the word spying except i will say when did you not digesting any pejorative and i use it frequently as you have media i went immediately when did you decide to use that was that off the cuff in the hearing that they are did you go into that hearing intending it was the words was actually off the cuff to tell you the truth and when when when senator senator i mean that the congressman probably from schatz from hawaii. should he you know know whoever was going you know when she wouldn't let him when he challenged me and said you want to change your language i was actually thinking like what's the issue i don't consider it a pejorative but if and or rather i play frankly we went back and looked at press usage and up until all the the full outrage a couple of weeks ago it's commonly used in the press to refer to authorize that to be such as refer it it's not i'm going to do it so i did hartmann what it is not commonly used by the department. my terms are mainly used by me. thank you

very much will come back. to one thing. the senate judiciary committee is taking a break after and taking testimony from bill barr the attorney general and what you're saying there are all of the photographers that are jumping in to try to get pictures of him before he leaves the room he has again been answering questions from both parties republican and democratic senators on the senate judiciary committee he was actually scheduled to have this testimony today the timing though it says this is just twenty four hours after a a letter that the special counsel bob mueller sent to bob barr expressing concerns about what he had released from the report. word of that letter was reported in the washington post also in the new york times and senator the attorney general rather

has been answering questions about what bob mueller said in that letter so we've actually all seen the letter now this is a letter that was sent on march twenty fourth this is a key part of the letter the attorney general these partly the special counsel special counsel robert mueller said that he felt that the summary from bob barr did not fully capture the context nature and substance of his off its work and conclusions he said the vast had led to public confusion about critical aspects of the results of the and best a geisha in some of the conclusions and that the attorney general made where the there was no conclusion and no obstruction of justice that those were the firm conclusions that the special counsel had made that is actually not quite what the report said a lot of conclusions were were information that the attorney general put at the door of congress to actually pick up and investigate this is some of the opening statement from the attorney general let's listen. and i called bob and so

what's the issue here are used to and i asked him if he was suggesting that the march twenty fourth letter was inaccurate and he said no but that the press reporting had been inaccurate and that the press was reading too much into it and i asked him you know specifically what his concern was and he said that his concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction but he was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report. alan fischer joins us now from capitol hill for the latest so allan is bob barr says there he says that he did not get the impression that they special counsel had any quibble with what his summary was of the of their report it is very clear in the letter that they special counsel did have issue with the summaries the the summary

that the attorney general released and in fact special counsel muller put together his own summaries that could have been released where are we with all of this now. well bill barr is placing the blame with the media he is seeing that robert mueller was upset at the interpretation that the media was putting on what came out is a four page summary and bill bonde is saying that it actually wasn't a summary of the four page summary that he came out with and said no collusion which remember is not what robert miller was investigating he was investigating whether or not there was a conspiracy between the russians and the trump campaign so he said there was no collusion nor struction of justice robert miller itemized ten places where he believed there could be a case made for obstruction of justice and he left it to robert mueller to bill

barr and the justice department to make a decision and bill barr decided that there was no obstruction this is been a very informative couple of hours a lot of it is quite dense but there are so it appears very polite on the surface but there are a number of spiky exchanges particularly between the democrats and bill by the democrats believe that bill barr in the four page letter that he put out which is what robert mueller was talking about in his letter and then again in the statement he made before the report was released to the public that he was essentially. seeing that he was the shield for a president trump and not doing what he could as an independent woman as america's top lawyer i think from very early on there's a staggering piece of information here which is largely been scattered over that we

have the miller report which cost between twenty five and thirty seven million dollars depending on which senator you want to believe or was waited for for two years that everyone was interested in and it is the most awaited political document in modern political history in the united states and the chairman of the committee that is talking to the attorney general about it and mitzi hasn't read it all which is to me quite staggering but it's clear that the republicans are playing what dick durbin who is the democratic senator from illinois described as the law corrupt defense which is let's not talk about trump let's not talk about russia let's talk about the f.b.i. and the justice department and how the investigate is hillary clinton and how it would be if she had used a private savva and let's see what we can dig up and muddy the waters a bit more no mike lee who is a supporter of the president and he is

a republican he cannot drop down a bit to the nub of this he said do you think that donald trump is what king is a russian agent and bill barr said no in the report is that anything to suggest that vladimir putin is anything on donald trump and again bill barr said no so both things both sides will think they're scoring points here they're still a long way to go but what we're seeing is a very partisan hearing which is exactly what we expected one untrusting thing is well the three candidates on the democratic side who are going to run for president in twenty twenty they're hoping to get the nomination they still have the questions to. ok alan and actually we have also gotten word within the last hour that. muller the man at the center of all this he has actually agreed to testify before congress as well we don't exactly know when so right now the senate judiciary committee is taking a break when they come back to continue the testimony we will keep an ear to that

there may be a repeat of this tomorrow because the attorney general is also supposed to testify before the house judiciary committee again we'll see if that's actually going to happen but whatever the case we will keep an eye and ear to this hearing once it picks up we'll have much more on the other side of the break thank you for joining . innocent lives ended in an instant. on the debate around

firearms. officer visors and families of the four than reality often changes. fold lines investigates the long lasting trauma inflicted on communities the aftermath mass shootings in america on al jazeera also one of our biggest strengths is that we talk to normal everyday people we get them to tell was stories and doing that really reveals the truth people are still gathered outside these gates waiting for any information most of them don't know whether their loved ones are alive or dead or miami really is a two worlds meet we can get to washington d.c. two hours but you can sit on juries in the rest of central america by. the same time but more importantly as well those two cultures north and south america. it's a very important place for the it's a big. story one of the most successful p.r. campaigns in the u.s. study after study demonstrated perspectives american media coverage what part of

this case you get through your thick head is hamas a terrorist organization the only thing that you're going to say is what we want you to see and if you don't say it when i go what you speak it would be very hard for ordinary americans to know that they're being deceived the occupation of the american mind on al-jazeera. the u.s. attorney general attacks allegations he misled the public to protect president trump in testimony before the senate. i'm richelle carey this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up.

violence on the streets of paris as tens of thousands of protesters rally to mark may day. the man india holds responsible for the attack on its forces in kashmir is designated a global terrorist by the u.n. and the world champion caster semenya loses her landmark legal case over her high testosterone levels. his attorney general william barr has defended himself against allegations that he misled the public to protect president trump and his summary of the report he has been testifying before the senate judiciary committee and his opening statement are talked about the letter from her in which the special special counsel wrote that his conclusions were misrepresented. and i called bob and said but you know what's the issue here are you suggesting i asked him if he was suggesting that the

march twenty fourth letter was inaccurate and he said no but that the press reporting had been inaccurate and that the press was reading too much into it and i asked him you know specifically what his concern was and he said that his concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction but he was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report so my last letter has been released and it has health are the summary letter provided to congress and released to the public on march twenty fourth did not fully capture the context nature and substance of his office's work and conclusion said that had led to public confusion about critical aspects of the results of the end best occasion and the market into a heated exchange with democratic senator dick durbin i find general board that

some of the things that you've been gauged in really leaves me wondering what you believe your role as attorney general is when it comes to something like this the attorneys don't put things in writing unless they're pretty serious about them there's an old rule in politics a good politician doesn't write a letter and doesn't throw want to weigh ok so i'm going to ask you if he puts it in writing of his concerns or your representations on march twenty fourth you couldn't recall that when congressman chris asked you that question a few days later saying that this was the. the march twenty fourth letter stated that bob mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction and it had the language in there about not exonerating the president. my view of events was that there was a lot of criticism of the special counsel for the ensuing few days and on thursday i got i got this letter. and when i talked to the

special counsel about the letter my understanding was his concern was not the accuracy of the statement of the findings in my letter but that he wanted more out there to provide additional context to explain his reasoning on why he didn't reach a decision on obstruction. alan fischer joins me live from capitol hill in fact allan at some point in the future we will be hearing from the special counsel. himself because he has agreed to come testify before congress or perhaps we can get some more clarity but the bottom line am the attorney general has been in the hot seat saying you know there is this letter from bob muller saying that the that there is some sort of issue that he has with the way you presented his summary of all of his the work that his team have been doing for two years the attorney

general's not backing down no alan. and i think you're right i think everything will become clear when bob miller sits in front of a committee and can explain what he meant by sending the letter because bill barr clearly has his interpretation not only of the report but of the letter that sent afterwards what we're seeing is undoubtedly republican senators running defense for donald trump the are suggesting that the report was a waste of time and that better resources would have been spent investigating hillary clinton and the use of an e-mail server yet we're still talking about six years on an essential you are putting forward the nor should this is all been a great waste of time bill barr is making the point that there was no collusion which to point out again is not what miller was investigating he was investigating

whether or not there was conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russians and he said there was nothing formal there that we could charge and when it came to obstruction of justice we knew that donald trump and said of course that robert mueller phone there was no obstruction of justice what he actually said was there were ten instances of obstruction of justice that he wasn't going to meet a call on whether or not that should actually go to court he left that to the attorney general the deputy attorney general and those would have. peter blute from billboard there was no prosecutable case which meant the could test the law on whether or not a sitting president could be charged with a crime what we're hearing is very product design that's the way it's been for the last two hours or so that's what we can expect when the hearing resumes in a boat i know donna from know that the democrats will continue to bill barr for being a defender of donald trump rather than the country's top lawyer. republicans will

continue to see that this was all a great waste of time isn't going to trump doing a wonderful job ok alan fischer with the wrap up now at the white house allan thank you john f. inger is a former communications director for the democratic national committee he joins us live from washington d.c. so john what do you see as the responsibility. of congress and general and i suppose ensure a democratic strategist with the democrats in particular to handle this to get to the bottom of this discrepancy between what the attorney general interpretation of this report is and what the special counsel says my report actually is. yeah i think there are if you talk about the responsibility of congress generally and i'm going to take this from a democratic point of view is as you as you say it's to it's to educate the public about what is actually happening here and i think what we've seen this morning is part of that is very clear that republicans written large both the ones in the

senate the ones in the trumpet ministration and now most specifically on the hot seat william barr have closed ranks around this president and what we saw this morning and with the release of the letter last night is that specifically the united states of america's top law enforcement official has perjured himself repeatedly and congress generally if somebody gives them false testimony under oath what congress does it's supposed to refer a criminal prosecution for perjury to the department of justice but the guy who did it runs the department of justice and so we are just tiptoeing along the edge of a constitutional crisis at this point and the question is does that get called does a question get called do we call it what it is for democrats there's a political calculus around that because if they see it before the general public appreciates the gravity of what's going on then that may affect them politically

generally the democratic yeah but what but what of that is it is it not their responsibility as a congress person that is sworn to uphold the constitution to do what he or she thinks is right regardless of the political calculus i don't know that that ends in impeachment or ends in any of those things but do they not owing to their constituency to at least investigate. yes absolutely that is the oath they swore and so the way democrats seem to be proceeding at this point is that they're going to hold the hearings they may not call them impeachment hearings but they're going to hold hearings like this to illustrate what is going on politically it's very interesting people are talking a lot about watergate from the one nine hundred seventy s. where richard nixon faced impeachment and at the beginning of that process not a lot of the public something like thirty seven percent of the public supported impeachment of the president until those hearings were put in front of people and

people saw what was going on and thought oh my goodness and then that brought the public around and that's what ultimately drove nixon from office and so i think that's generally the trajectory that people are following here if the democrats were to impeach donald trump and most americans didn't feel that that was warranted that's also a problem of legitimacy so i don't think that's just a political self-serving calculus i think there's something real there but it's really tough republican senators are showing no interest in holding this administration accountable and this administration is doing a lot of things that it needs to be held accountable for so this may play out again tomorrow barr is also was also supposed to testify before the house which obviously there's a completely different file there because it's controlled by the democrats and we don't even know that he actually is going to go but how do you see this playing out differently and the house if it all. i think that's a very good question you won't have lindsey graham who is the head of the committee

in the senate this morning like he was essentially cutting attorney general bar off when attorney general barr tried to begin to answer questions offer his answer senator graham would cut him off an answer for him less because i think because senator graham was afraid of what might come out of attorney general bars given how much perjury we've seen from him lately so yeah tomorrow would be a very similar topic but potentially a very different dynamic where you have democrats actually doing more to hold him to the fire although the democratic senators this morning have been doing recently good job so there's just a lot more of this to come in we'll see how the public is reacting and how that shifts the calculus up on capitol hill all right john thank you very much for joining us. thank you joe there has been violence and protesters and police and paris as thousands marched to mark may day this is the scene in the capital as police fired tear gas to try to control the protests more than seven thousand

officers were deployed across the capital after authorities warned security measures would be tightened if you're the traditional march would be hijacked by radical activists after so-called yellow vests anti-government protesters joined a march. move or sixty two years old and we can't get by anymore we're hammered with taxes our pensions are fall and i retired with a certain amount and now i have much less and we can't get by anymore so we want to change we want renewal apparently mccrone was elected for a certain renewal but it wasn't just whole it's even worse than what we had before . there is you to see between the yellow vests and the unions but only for the protest of the union should be supporting us for all workers we all want to live by the unions being with us from the beginning there are still some differences and we'd like them to be here with us more often. the united nations has declared the leader of pakistan by.