>> attorney general william barr wrapping up his second day of testimony on capitol hill this week. he's gone before the house and now senate appropriations subcommittees to discuss the president's 2020 budget request for the justice department. today's hearing with the attorney general is on c-span2 tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. we'll show it to you now from the beginning here on c-span3.

>> the president's budget request proposes over $30 billion for the department of justice. because you indicated yesterday you will report to congress on the mueller investigation next week, it's my hope that the budget request will remain the major focus of today's hearing. i'm not naive, but i hope that's the case. i would like to begin, though, by asking you a question about your testimony yesterday. i would like for you to respond during your time in regard to clarifying an issue related to the mueller report. when we met before your confirmation, you and i met, i told you i'd like to see the mueller report released to the public as expeditiously as possible and to the fullest extent possible as allowed by law. will you release the redacted version of the report special counsel mueller committed to you or did you intend to indicate in

your testimony comments yesterday that you will only provide a report of your own findings that are derived from the mueller report? now, the focus on this hearing, president's fiscal year 20 budget request. the request is not based off of the department's fy '19 appropriation and therefore does not contemplate the increases provided or the government-wide 1.9% increase included for federal employees. because the baseline of the fy '20 request is below, i encourage you to take time to discuss any needs that may not be adequately represented. in particular i hope you discuss the department's resource needs as they relate to the first step act. i'm an original cosponsor of that legislation, and i'm concerned to learn that the fy

'20 request only includes 14 million in additional funds. that figure is far short of the $75 million authorized by congress. i do note several program increases for the department of justice included in the administration's request this year. these increases reflect the administration's priorities, which include strengthening our national security, combatting violent crime, cyber crime, drug trafficking and opioid epidemic. the request also includes enhancement for immigration enforcement and another administration priority under the executive office of immigration review and the environment of natural resources division. fy '20. i am concerned to learn that the request does not include technology enhancements or improvements for eor. our fy '19 provisions allowed for $20 million to transform eor's paper system to an electronic management system. that system was only forward looking so the $25 million that we put in place for the department of justice did not include paper files associated with the 861,513 cases that are

backlogged at ecas. fy '19. if there are additional needs associated with full implementation of electronic records, let's discuss those today, mr. attorney general. the fy '20 request reflects the department's broad mission of defending and protecting the laws of the united states. members of the doj include the

fbi, the dea, the atf, u.s. marshals and the bureau of prisons. the people who work there put their lives on the line every day to keep our country and communities safe. the department's mission, and especially its law enforcement focus, is central to american safety and stability. it's imperative that congress ensures the department is adequately equipped to affect its mission and look forward to working with you in that endeavor. i also look forward to learning more of the department's request for resources to the law enforcement mental wellness initiative, which includes peer mentoring, mental health checks,

and suicide prevention. for the third straight year, police suicide outnumbered lives lost in the line of duty. much like our veterans in active duty service, law enforcement officers need access to comprehensionive programs that address mental wellness, something that many jurisdictions struggle to provide the necessary resources to provide. i'll soon turn to senator shaheen, but i want to thank you, attorney general barr, for your attention and acknowledgment of the committee's requests. our questions for the record from the fy '19 budget hearing a year ago. the department's responses to these questions were eight months late making it impossible for our committee to consider the department's responses as we crafted our fy '19 bill. after i brought this to your attention, we received doj's responses in very short order. i thank you for that. it's my hope that under your leadership the department will continue to respond expeditiously to this year's questions from the record.

and one of the things i remember from the conversations we had before your confirmation was your commitment to work closely with congress and this subcommittee in particular to have open dialogue and transparent conversation. i would add an additional thank you which is thank you for your presence here today. this testimony is important and i now recognize the ranking member senator shaheen. >> thank you, mr. chairman. good morning, attorney general barr. thank you for appearing before this subcommittee. i share the chairman's view that we want to try and focus mostly on your budget, but i have to begin with two concerns i have about actions that you and the justice department have taken. first, i saw your testimony yesterday. i still do have questions on the special counsel's report as i believe this report has serious national security implications. we know that russia interfered in our election. we know the special counsel has

brought nearly 200 charges against 34 individuals and three companies including six former trump officials and 26 russian nationals. i am concerned by recent media reports that those working on the special counsel's team believe your summary glossed over the actions in the white house, including the president. the american people should be allowed to see the reported in its entirety so they can make their own judgments about its content. i'm also troubled by the department's recent decision to support a district court decision that would completely invalidate the affordable care act. i have questions for you as to why this decision was made. this recent action by the department will put millions of americans including 118,000 granite staters at risk of not being able to afford or simply not have access to their current health care coverage. the loss of protections for

preexisting conditions and soaring prescription drug class for seniors will affect thousands. this include a young boy named seth in northfield, new hampshire. he lives with hemophilia. before the affordable care act seth's father would have to change jobs because seth's medical costs were constantly running up against the family's annual limits on the dollar value of insurance coverage. children like seth, those living with preexisting conditions stand to lose the most if the affordable care act is wiped out. they could be denied insurance coverage because of their medical condition and insurers would be able to jack up costs and cut off coverage after medical bills reach an arbitrary threshold. i believe we need to work together, republicans and democrats, to improve the health

care law, not unravel it. i hope that we will be able to do that in the coming months and years. i do acknowledge, as i said, that you are here today in your role as attorney general to explain the department's fiscal year '20 budget request. the complex and often difficult work of the department is vast, ranging from national security investigations to operating a national prison system to management of billions in grants to state and local entities. yet in fiscal year 2020 the department has requested nearly 2% less funding for its missions than the level provided in the omnibus we passed last month. the bureau of prisons is a large part of this reduction. a cut of 188 million below what we just enacted in fiscal year '19. it's disconcerting that the department would slash the budget for b.o.p. in light of our direction and congress to

continue hiring particularly so as not to rely on augmentation, which is the dangerous practice of using administrative staff like teachers and counselors as correctional officers, including cutting programming for inmates at facilities across the country including my home state of new hampshire. it's also troubling that the department seems to have forgotten about meeting the requirements for prisoner reentry as part of the recently passed first step act. there's only 14 million requested with little detail as to how you plan to use that money when 75 million has been authorized for this effort. i was also surprised about drastic reductions and eliminations proposed for justice department grant programs including those to help our communities fight opioids. i'm deeply concerned that this

budget request cuts nearly 100 million in funding that we just provided for justice grant programs to help communities respond to the opioid crisis with a balance of enforcement, treatment and prevention programs. i'm interested to hear your reasons why your fy '20 budget dramatically reduces this critical funding and eliminates cops anti-heroin task forces which we provided 32 million to cover and mentoring programs for youth who are directly affected by the toll opioids have had on their families and communities. we funded that at 15 million. we see this very dramatically in new hampshire, where as i think we discussed previously we have the third highest overdose death rate in the country.

i understand that there's more demand on these programs than even we in congress have appropriated. so what i don't understand is why we're talking about eliminating them. in closing, i want to echo the appreciation that was expressed by chairman moran for the 112,000 career employees at the department of justice. they work very hard to keep americans safe from crime and terrorism and especially during the government shutdown they worked without any guarantee that they would be paid. so i know that i speak for everybody on this committee in thanking them for their service. i look forward to your testimony today, mr. attorney general. >> before we turn to the attorney general for his remarks, i'd recognize the vice chairman of the full committee senator leahy for any comments or opening statement he'd like to make. >> thank you, chairman. i agree with both you and senator shaheen and the 112,000 who kept on working during the shutdown. it went on for 35 days.

i remember very well the day it ended when four of us met in my office, senator shelby, myself, congresswoman lowy and congresswoman granger and we made an agreement on the appropriations. the president vetoed the first one because it gave them only 1.6 billion for the wall. the agreement that we agreed to gave 1.3 billion, but he accepted that and i thought it was time we got back to work. now, there are a lot of pressing issues facing the justice department, immigration

enforcement, combatting opioids, violent crime, protecting voting rights. a lot of these are going to be discussed this morning. there will be other oversight hearings. i first want to express my appreciation to robert mueller and his team for their service to our country, determining exactly what happened during unprecedented attack on our democracy. we already know from their investigation's 37 indictments they uncovered serious misconduct reaching some of the highest level. even if the president's involvement did not amount to a provable crime and thankfully so. the american people and members of congress now expect to see the special counsel's work. it's my hope you're still committed to the greatest possible degree of transparency. as you know, classified material can be shared with congress and is on a constant basis. but there's also precedence for sharing grand jury information

as well, especially in high profile investigations of keen public interest. in ongoing investigations and other reason to redact certain information like all things in life eventually end. one way or another the vast majority of the special counsel's report will ultimately become public. i think it attempts to hide swaths of the report from public scrutiny along the way will only fuel suspicions raised by many that the justice department which represents the united states is playing the role of president trump's defense team. for the integrity of the department, i know you well enough to know you agree this is a result that must be avoided. your imprint on the course of justice and rule of law in these moments are going to be scrutinized long after both you and i are gone from public service. the only way out in my view is transparency. you do have the discretion to release the full report to congress.

nothing in the letter of the law stands in your way. i hope in the coming weeks you'll work in good faith with congress to accomplish that. mr. chairman, i will have a number of questions on the budget, and i appreciate the courtesy of being recognized. >> you're welcome, mr. vice chairman. attorney general barr, we're ready for your testimony. thank you for joining us. anxious to hear what you have to say. >> thank you, chairman moran and ranking member shaheen and vice chair leahy and members of the subcommittee. i'm pleased to be here today to present the president's fiscal year 2020 budget for the department of justice. i'm joined here today by the department's chief financial officer assistant attorney general for administration lee loftus. we're looking forward to discussing how our requested appropriations will help protect the safety and rights of your

constituents. i'm here to talk about the department's $29.2 billion fy '20 budget request. i believe the budget request supports our priorities. we're seeking 128 million of increases for our violent crime prevention work. we're seeking 291 million enhancements for our drug abuse and opioid efforts. we have 131 million for our national security and cyber crime efforts. and i'm seeking an additional 72 million for our immigration work. i'm proud of the department's accomplishments and our work force of more than 112,000 men and women and i'm hooking forward to your support for the resources we need for their important work. with that, i'm happy to answer any questions.

>> attorney general, thank you for your brief statement and thanks for the opportunity to ask you questions. i would just reiterate and ask for an answer to the question i raised in my opening statement. i was uncertain as to what you were conveying during your house testimony about whether you will provide a report of the report or a redacted version of the actual mueller report. >> yes. it's my intention to provide the latter, as i said in my confirmation hearing. the regulation under which we're operating did not contemplate and specifically was meant to avoid these public reports. but i feel i have the discretion in these circumstances to make the report public as long as it's consistent with the law. as i said at my hearing that i was going to try to be as transparent as possible, and that's what i've been working toward. there are four areas.

i intend to release the report with redactions made in four areas. they were specified in my march 29th letter. the first area is 6 e material. i'm talking here, by the way, about the report that would be available to the public generally. and then i'll talk a little bit about the report available to committees of congress. the report i'm working on now, i would like to make available with redactions that would enable me to make it public generally. and there are four categories. the grand jury material, which by law must be retained within the department absent very specific circumstances which i do not think exist here. second category is any material identified by the intelligence community that would put at risk intelligence sources and methods. the third category is information that would impair

existing prosecutions and investigations that are going forward right now, either by affecting the ability of the department to pursue them as effectively as we'd like or being unfair to the individuals who are actually parties to that prosecution. you will recognize that special counsel mueller did spin off a number of cases which continue in progress and are being handled in the department. and so we have to make sure that nothing in the report impinges on those ongoing cases. the final category is information that implicates the privacy or reputational interests of peripheral third parties who were not charged. the people who are making these redactions and implementing these four categories are the department working with the

special counsel office lawyers and those are the people making the redactions. as i mentioned yesterday, we plan to identify very specifically which redactions relate to which category and try to explain why that redaction was made. i also said yesterday that when it comes to congress, once i get this done and the public, everyone has the report, i'm willing to work with the committees. the regulation requires that -- doesn't require, but it has my notification go to the judiciary committees and i end to take up with the house and the senate judiciary committees, the chair and the ranking members of each what other areas, you know, they feel they have a need to have access to the information and see if i can work to accommodate that. as has been correctly said here, the fact that information is classified doesn't mean that

congress can't see it. so i'm willing to work on some of these categories. the category i think is most inflexible under the law right now is the grand jury material. but even there, once the redactions are complete, i intend to read the report and see if there are areas where it affects the intelligibility, really has an impact on the report. and i'm willing to work with the judiciary committees to see if there's a work-around that could address any concerns or need they have. >> i'm going to continue with another question beyond my time. i want to talk about grant funding that's been delayed due to litigation surrounding sanctuary cities. in the past the department has tried to enforce federal

immigration law by imposing special counsel conditions or bonus points on recipients of federal grant funding. these conditions restrict grant funding to jurisdictions that certify they're in cliens with federal law stating that they are not sanctuary cities or states. that's not something that i'm complaining about in this question. what i'm concerned about is the money that has been held up as a result of that litigation because of pending litigation in regard to burn jag grant funds. we've had success in that occurring, but unfortunately that has not been the case in the fy 18 cops hiring grants. these solicitations were pulled and applicants are still unable to apply for cops hiring grants going back to fy 18 awards. have you reviewed the department's policies? is there a plan to figure out how we can provide those necessary resources to local law enforcement to retain and hire

law enforcement office? >> yes. i think the problem is really a function of these nationwide injunctions imposed by district court judges. this is a fairly recent phenomenon. the old practice in law was that if a district court judge issued a decision, the judge could redress the grievances of the parties before the court. but now courts are granting nationwide injunctions. as a result if a district court in northern california, which is i think the court that may have been involved here, grants an injunction, they enjoin the grant program nationwide. now, one of the reasons -- and lee can correct me if i'm wrong about this. but one of the reasons we were able to get out the burn jag grants was there had been a district court in chicago that

had enjoined it nationwide. we went to the seventh circuit. they required the court to reduce its injunction just to its jurisdiction. when that happened, we were able to get out the burn jag grants. what's happened with the cops grants is that it's enjoined by several district court judges. we're arguing if not today, within the next few days within the seventh and ninth circuit to have that addresses so we can get those grants out. frankly, i think we need to come to grips with this issue of nationwide injunctions because i think the way the system should do these issues, should percolate up through various circuit courts and so forth up to the supreme court and the idea that one district court judge can kill programs nationwide is a serious problem. >> thank you for your answer. if you're successful in finding a path to see that the cops grants are available, please be prepared as a department to proceed quickly if and when that

occurs. i don't think local law enforcement has been able to even submit a grant application. it is significantly delayed and maybe there's a way those grant applications -- i don't know what the injunction covers, but maybe there's a way to submit the grant application even if you can't award a grant until you receive judicial authority to do so. >> i'll look into that. >> thank you. senator shaheen. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me echo what senator moran was saying about the cops grants particularly in states like new hampshire where we have no sanctuary cities it's very onerous for us to be affected by these rulings. i want to go back to your comments about the four reasons that you intend to redact portions of the special

counsel's report. the fourth one was information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties. does that mean you will redact information to protect the represent national interest of the president? >> no. i'm talking about people in private life, not public office holders. >> thank you. news just broke today that you have a special team looking into why the fbi opened an investigation into russian interference in the 2016 elections. i wonder if you can share with this committee who's on this team, why you felt a need to form that kind of a team and what you intend to be the scope of their investigation. >> yeah. as i said in my confirmation hearing, i am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the trump campaign during 2016. and a lot has already been

investigated and a substantial portion of it has been investigated and is being investigated by the office of inspector general at the department. but one of the things i want to do is pull together all the information from the various investigations that have gone on, including on the hill and in the department, and see if there are any remaining questions to be addressed. >> and can you share with us why you feel a need to do that? >> well, you know, for the same reason we're worried about foreign influence in elections. we want to make sure that during -- i think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. it's a big deal. the generation i grew up in which is the vietnam war period, people were all concerned about spying on anti-war people and so forth by the government and there were a lot of rules put in

place to make sure there's an adequate basis before our law enforcement agencies get involved in political surveillance. i'm not suggesting that those rules were violated but i think it's important to look at that. and i'm not talking about the fbi necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly. >> so you're not suggesting, though, that spying occurred? >> well, i guess -- i think spying did occur, yes. i think spying did occur. >> well -- >> the question was whether it was adequately predicated. and i'm not suggesting it wasn't adequately predicated. i need to explore that. i think it's my obligation. congress is usually very concerned about intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane. i want to make sure that happened.

we have a lot of rules about that. i want to say that i've said i'm reviewing this. i haven't set up a team yet, but i have in mind having some colleagues help me pull all this information together and letting me know whether there are some areas that should be looked at. i also want to make clear. this is not launching an investigation of the fbi. frankly, to the extent there were any issues at the fbi, i do not view it as a problem that's endemic to the fbi. i think there was probably a failure among a group of leaders there at the upper echelon. so i don't like to hear attacks about the fbi because i think the fbi is an outstanding organization and i think chris wray is a great partner for me. i'm very pleased he's the director.

if it becomes necessary to look over some former officials' activities, i expect i'll be relying heavily on chris and work closely with him in looking at that information. but that's what i'm doing. i feel i have an obligation to make sure that government power is not abused. i think that's one of the principal roles of the attorney general. >> i certainly agree. i think we all have an obligation to make sure government power is not abused. the question i have is what happens when the executive is potentially playing that role? that's where it doesn't seem to me there has been adequate oversight. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator collins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome, mr. attorney general. last june your predecessor, then attorney general sessions,

announced that the department would no longer defend the affordable care act's preexisting conditions conditions because they were inseverable from the aca's individual mandate. two weeks ago your department went much further, deciding that it would not defend any provisions of the aca. this puts at risk other important provisions in addition to protection for people with preexisting conditions such as the medicaid expansion, dependent coverage for young adults up to age 26 and coverage for preventive services. now, the individual mandate is a highly regressive penalty and i've long opposed it and congress repealed it. but i disagree strongly with the department's decision not to defend the rest of the aca. in a letter that i wrote to your

predecessor last june and to you on april 1st, i made the point that the individual mandate can be struck down and severed from the aca while the remainder of the law can stay in place. this isn't just my opinion. in 2010, the chief justice roberts said in the free enterprise fund case that under the doctrine of severability that generally speaking when confronting a constitutional flaw, we try to limit the solution to the problem, receiving any problematic portions while leaving the remainder intact. in 1990 when you were head of the department's office of legal counsel under president george h.w. bush, you authored an opinion finding that the

president could enforce the remainder of the statute after an unconstitutional provision had been severed. i agree wholeheartedly with your 1990 opinion. what led you to take a different approach? >> thank you, senator. when i visited with you before my confirmation, i promised you that i would personally take a look at this issue. and i did. and i studied it carefully and i provided my views robustly within the deliberative process that was going on within the executive branch. as i've said, when the attorney general is providing legal advice, i think the first obligation is to provide the advice that you think is the right legal answer and how you

would decide the case if you were a judge, which was the advice i gave. but i also have said that if the other stake holders in the executive branch and the people involved, the agencies and so forth end up in a different place, as litigator for the united states, the attorney general should be able to advance positions that he believes are defensible and reasonable legal positions even if they are not positions that the attorney general would adopt if the attorney general was a judge deciding the case. in this situation, the ultimate decision was to support the position of the states including texas and the decision of the district court judge. rationale for that is that it is

a defensible and reasonable legal position given that was the decision of the district court and the position of four justices on the original nfib case who felt if the mandate goes, the rest of the statute goes. i know there's an additional point there, which is the fact that congress did take out the penalty from the mandate and therefore should that act be viewed as essentially validating the rest of the statute. those issues were debated but at the end of the day i felt that the position was a defensible position and it was the position of the executive branch. >> i would just make the final point that congress had the opportunity to strike other provisions and chose not to. >> yes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator collins. senator leahy.

>> thank you, mr. chairman, attorney general, thank you for being here. over the decades we've had a chance to talk at these hearings many times. let me go back to the discussion of your march 24th letter. you said the president did not commit obstruction of justice. you said that before any reference to congress. of course, you have the position that no matter the evidence, you don't believe a president can be indicted while in office. you said the mechanism is through the ballot or congress, not a criminal court.

did you have any conversation with the special counsel about why he did not reach a conclusion one way or the other on obstruction? >> yes, i did. he also has a fuller explanation of that in the report that i'll be making available hopefully next week. >> did he express any expectation and interest in leaving the obstruction decision to congress? >> not that -- he didn't say that to me, no. >> so he said the obstruction decision should be up to you? >> he didn't say that either. but that's generally how the department of justice works. generally grand juries are to investigate crimes and a prosecutor's role at the end of the day is binary. are there charges or no charges, or is this a crime or not a crime. i've had some experience in the

field. >> i know. let me say that i don't feel -- i'm looking forward to explaining my decision that briefly outlined in the march 24th letter, but i don't feel i can do it until the report is out because i think the report contains a lot of the information that would give meaning and content to the discussion and i really can't do it in the absence of getting it out. so i'm anxious to get it out. that's what i've been working toward. i said i'd come up to the hill as soon as the hill will have me which i guess is at the end of the month to testify about that. >> to follow up on something senator moran asked and the attorney wants to be redacted, have you overruled mr. mueller or his team on any redaction question? >> no. >> one way or the other? >> no. >> have you discussed any specific redactions with the

white house? >> no. >> just curious, before this came out you were at an annual st. patrick's day's day report with the prime minister of ireland exchanging shamrocks and so on. your long discussion and apparently very -- you both seemed very happy, you and the president. were you discussing the report? >> was i? >> yeah. >> no. it was actually in front of several justices of the supreme court and other dignitaries. >> i understand. >> i wasn't alone with the president. >> you're sure of that? >> what? >> so anybody thinking they heard you say anything else would be wrong? >> right. >> okay.

you've indicated you'll redact grand jury material. but of course in both the watergate and the ken starr investigations, grand jury secrecy was overcome to allow congressional access. have you asked the district court to release grand jury material to congress? >> did you say -- were you citing the starr investigation? >> and the watergate. >> the starr investigation involved a specific statute. >> rule 6c? >> no. the statute setting up the independent counsel provided for the report going to congress and overrode 6e. >> more specifically, have you asked the district court to release grand jury material? >> no. the law right now is in the

district of columbia that the court can only waive 6e for one of the grounds specified specifically in 6e. there's no sort of inherent power in the court to do that. and if someone shows me and makes a persuasive argument that it's covered, i'm willing to listen to that, but i don't see it. >> and lastly, a dollar amount, your budget we're told from atf could lose 370 positions under the president's budget even though it shows a slight increase because of attrition and everything else. are you satisfied with atf in a time of violent crime and everything else losing these positions? >> are you talking about the 377 positions that mr. brandon mentioned? >> i understood 370, but

whichever. >> we don't think he will lose those positions. there's some complicated accounting here that i'm sort of a little mystified by myself, but as i understand it we've been continually investing and increasing the number of atf agents and they were worried about bringing on too many agents in excess of funds that were going to be appropriated and they had sort of the way they quickly make up for that is to just take out head count rather than make cuts across the board. we don't think that they are. and mr. loftus here can give you more of an explanation. >> my time is up, but i really

would like more because you're do history 70 or the administration's 46. either way, it looks very much like cuts in atf. >> i can add, senator, to say atf does have a 4% increase in this budget. i have spoken with the atf chief. i think he's an outstanding guy. i worked closely with him over many years. i do know they are concerned about the resources in their budget, but we have looked at the 4% increase. we don't think the 4% increase translates into a loss of hundreds of positions, but we're willing to work very closely with atf and make sure we can protect certainly their agents. again, any money that atf receives, i think can be put to very good use and we look forward to working with both atf and the committee on this one. >> senator leahy, thank you. we have three votes scheduled at 11:45. my intention is to go until those votes are called and don't

anticipate coming back after that occurs. senator kennedy is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. general, i don't intend to talk much about your budget. i think we both know that congress will make sure that you're adequately funded. i want to talk a little bit about the mueller report. i think it was inevitable that some people were going to be disappointed in the result or results that mr. mueller reached. you can only be young once. you can always be immature. there will be some who were so disappointed in the result that they're going to attack the process in bad faith. i would strongly encourage you to ignore that. just call them like you see them, follow the law. can we agree that if you turned over the mueller report without grand jury material redacted to

only members of congress, can we agree that there is a material risk that the grand jury information would leak? >> i think so. leak? >> i think so. >> i mean, it's been known to happen. >> yes. occasionally. >> yes, sir. in a sentence or two, why would that be bad? >> because we depend on the secrecy of the grand jury for our whole system of justice, and people have to be assured when they go into the grand jury that these are going to be confidential sessions. >> i got it. i got it. can we agree that if you turned over an unredacted report to the members of the united states congress that included material that might impair an existing investigation or investigations that there is a material risk that that information might leak? >> yes, senator, there is a risk. >> why is that bad?

>> well, presumably the reason people are interested in seeing the report is because they believe it's important for the criminal justice process to work. >> yes, sir. >> allowing this other information to come out would frustrate, from the prosecutor's standpoint, the system from working in other cases, and from the defendant's standpoint, it would be potentially unfair to the defendant. >> let's talk about reputational risk. if you turn over a report -- >> excuse me, could i just add something? >> certainly. >> in some cases there are gag orders from the court prohibiting this information from going out. >> if you would turn over an unredacted report containing unredacted information that could raise reputational risk, can we agree there is a material risk that that would leak? >> yes, senator. >> why is that bad? >> well, it goes back to the --

if someone has not committed a crime at the end of the day, and in this context if they're not public office holders, they're private citizens, the government is not in a position to say they did anything wrong, it would be unfair, just fundamentally unfair, to put that information out. >> would that be especially the case if someone thought their communication was confidential? >> yes. >> kind of like dr. ford? what thought she was making a confidential communication until some member of the judiciary committee or their staffs turned her life upside down and leaked that. >> i'm not aware of the circumstances myself. >> i'm not, either. i wish i were. it was probably the greatest injustice i've seen in the time i've been here.

let me talk a little bit in the minute i have left, and i'm going to land this plane on time, mr. chairman. i know you're taking a look at the genesis of the investigations with respect to the 2016 election. just quickly, can we agree that the fbi is the premiere law enforcement agency in all of human history? >> absolutely. >> can we agree that we want fbi agents and justice department members to have thought about the world, thought about socioeconomic problems and thought about how to solve those problems. you don't want a dummy working for the fbi or the justice department, correct? but they're not supposed to act on those political beliefs, are they? >> no, senator. >> it appears to me -- i'm not going to ask you this question -- that there were a handful of men and women at the fbi and possibly at the department of justice who did

act on their political beliefs in 2016. some of them work for donald trump. if you don't believe me, just ask secretary clinton. some of them were for secretary clinton. if you don't believe me, ask president trump. and that's not right. and we need to stop this from ever happening again. my plane has landed. >> thank you, senator kennedy. senator reed. >> thank you very much, thank you, attorney general. let me turn to your february 24 letter to the judiciary committee and along the lines of senator leahy -- you say, while this report does not conclude the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. which raises a question in my mind, did the special counsel

find probable cause that a crime had been committed? >> i'm not going to characterize the report. the report will speak for itself and that's why i want to get it out. >> then let me just follow up. >> but i think my letter says he did not find a crime was committed. >> i understand that. but i think it's important to note that you took his language and said, i did not find a crime but i can't exonerate the president. that suggests that there is a possibility that probable cause kpils existed for a crime, however, someone, either director mueller or yourself, made a determination that the evidence would not be beyond -- could not convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, or that the policy the department was not to charge the president because constitutional issue of impeachment. so this is a -- again, i'm trying to understand why not only director mueller said this, but you repeated it, that the

president was not exonerated from the obstruction of justice allegations. >> because as i explained yesterday, i was trying to state just the bottom line conclusions and not characterize it or try to summarize the report beyond just stating its bottom line conclusions and i thought the best way of doing that was taking that language from bob mueller's report. >> let me turn the question around. if there was no evidence of probable cause, then i would presume he could have said very clearly that there was no crime committed that he could, in fact, exonerate the president, as he seems to have done with the allegations of conspiracy between the campaign and russia. >> i think that sentence says there is not a crime and he's

not exonerating. i'm not trying to determine his report. probable cause is something for when you start investigating something. a lot of things have probable cause. >> i agree with you completely, it's important to get the whole report out to the american public, because there are serious questions that we're just going back and forth on, and your response, i think, is very critical. those questions aren't going to be resolved until the american people see this report. not sections of it, not pair paraphrases of it but this entire report. let me quickly ask another question, which is do you have any specific evidence that there was anything improper about the counter-intelligence investigation by the fbi or anything improper carried out by the special counsel relative to the 2016 election? do you ev

do you have any evidence? >> i'm sorry, it was a compound question. >> there was a special investigation by the fbi involving the 2016 election involving primarily the trump campaign. there was an investigation by director mueller into the 2016 campaign and other issues. have you any evidence that there was anything improper in those investigations? >> i have no specific evidence that i would cite right now. i do have questions about it. >> so this panel you're putting together is -- >> i'm not putting together a panel. >> so you just have some interest in this, you don't have any evidence? >> i have concerns about various aspects of it. >> do you believe that the investigation that director mueller undertook was a witch hunt or illegal, as has been asserted by the president? >> as i said during my confirmation, it really depends on where you're sitting. if you are somebody who is being falsely accused of something, you would tend to view the

investigation as a witch hunt. >> you're sitting as the attorney general of the united states with a constitutional responsibility, so if you could answer in that regard. >> i'm not going to characterize. it is what it is. mueller and his team conducted an investigation and were issuing a report. i'll use my own adjectives. >> you can use your own adjectives, and those, i assume, don't include witch hunt or illegal. is that correct? those would not be in your answer. >> i haven't referred to the report that way. >> senator makowsky. >> thank you, mr. chairman. attorney general, welcome. i'm going to start my questions with the issue of marijuana. senator gardner has really taken the lead on this issue over here in the senate. i have been supportive of his

efforts. he's trying to move forward with the state's act. i'm co-sponsoring that. but when we visited, and during your confirmation process, you explained that you believed that the current conflict between federal and state marijuana laws is untenable, was the word that you described. you also explained that you will not upset settled expectation or the reliance interests that have developed because of the policies from the prior administration. but you did state that you believe the current situation really has to be addressed. i know and understand that you don't support the wholesale legalization of marijuana. you made it clear that we face a binary choice between the federal prohibition and a, quote, federal approach to correct the disconnect between federal and state marijuana laws. and so i think you committed to me and to others that this is

something that congress has to address the right way, which is through legislation, and we would agree with that. we think that the state's act is an approach that does what you have recommended. it adjusts the federal law the right way to create a federal approach to marijuana. i think the president has expressed some support for it. so can you share with me, share with the committee where you are on this approach that has been outlined in this state's act and whether or not we can work with you on this issue? >> yes, senator. the situation that i think is intolerable and which i'm opposed to is the current situation we're in. >> right. >> and i would prefer one of two approaches rather than where we are. personally, i would still favor one uniform federal rule against marijuana, but if there is not sufficient consensus to obtain

that, then i think the way to go is to permit a more federal approach so states can, you know, make their own decisions within the framework of the federal law, and so we're not just ignoring the enforcement of federal law. i haven't studied specifically the state's law, but i submitted it for comment. once we get those comments, we'll be able to work with you on any concerns about the state's law. but i would much rather that approach, the approach taken by the state's act, than where we currently are. >> well, i think you'll have a group of folks over here that would like to work with you, would like to work with the department on that. let me move to vava and specially violence criminal jurisdiction. in the 20th amendment of vava,

we recognized tribes to be able to prosecute native domestic violence offenders in tribal courts, and this was for a limited class of offenses. just last week the house passed its reauthorization vehicle that expands this jurisdiction to a broader class of sexual assault and domestic violence offenses as well as crimes against children and assaults on tribal police officers. the vehicle there, the reauthorization vehicle, also allows for a pilot project that is specific to alaska native villages that have 75% or greater native population to exercise this jurisdiction. i think that all these provisions in the house bill are a step in the right direction. you and i have had discussion about the issues of just protection in general in outlying areas of very remote parts of my state where we

really have got to be thinking outside of the box when it comes to how we provide for protection, and so allowing for these limitations based on jurisdiction are really hard when you have women and children that are vulnerable. so i am hoping that we can continue to work with you on these jurisdictional issues. i'm hopeful that we'll have a chance to bring you up to the state so we can get you out into some of these villages, see how these tribal courts are functioning, and again, better explore the opportunities to provide for a level of safety. i do appreciate you including the 5% tribal set-aside from the crime victims fund. i think this is going to make a difference. but if you can comment in any way on this aspect of tribal jurisdiction and what it might mean for domestic violence protection. >> i think alaskan native women

face high levels of domestic violence in very remote areas. i've actually scheduled a trip up to alaska specifically to visit some of these communities, and so i would approach this with a great deal of sympathy for the need to think outside of the box and to do something that's effective in protecting these -- this vulnerable population. and i'm prepared to work with you to try to fashion something that will work. >> well, i appreciate that, and also working on the murdered missing indigenous women's initiatives we're working on. i look forward to that as well, too, and welcoming you to the state. thank you, attorney general. >> i just want to say one thing about the report. i would compassionately ask the more that you can reveal if it

doesn't interfere with the criminal investigation or with intelligence that we need to protect, the more you can do, the more healing will happen for our country. i believe it would be very, very helpful. i hope you will consider that when you're releasing your report back to us. the other thing i want to say is on the ac, i think my friend senator collins has spoken that we're all concerned, no matter what side we're on, we're concerned about health care in america, how we care for the most vulnerable. but also how we help the gouging going on for some in the middle. we have fixes for that. if the fifth circuit or the supreme court is not favorable to your client in the quest to basically have this completely repealed and successful enough to hold, and i think it will. i think one of those courts will overturn basically the position that's been taken by the administration. if that's the case, what process

do you have and what procedure? how do you proceed if your client is still not acceptable towards the defeat by the highest court in the land if it goes there? how do we get back to where we afford the affordable care act so we can fix it and make sure the american public has access? >> so if they ultimately lose it, then the aca stays in effect. >> you have a client you have to represent. you're representing that client, then you have to come back and represent the people of the united states of america, which is still intact. and we're trying to fix it. i think it's basically harmed us from fixing the repair we've had for over a year and a half.

we haven't been able to move guard because they're repealing it in texas, now the fifth circuit and on and on. are you going to be in a position to defend the aca if the highest court in the land does not accept their -- >> yes, senator. absolutely. >> i'm just very much concerned about that. west virginia has been ravaged by the opioid epidemic and i've supported the regions of the fbi in their efforts to catch the largest distributordistributors. it is now well known that a single pharmacy in the town of kermit, less than 4,000 people, received shipments of roughly 9 million pain pills in this little town. it's less well known that the drug ep forcement agency resisted comments to restore their authority, so my question would be, do you still there is

from substantial likelihood. they're rushing statements in our little sdpalt over this roll. >> all your legal eagles there, we really need help there. we need your support putting it back to probable, and basically it's very contentious change that went in and it was substantial, which basically stopped the dna train in its tracks. it stopped these shipments before it went into the streets. >> it's very, very porchlt it's horrendous how excite we'll do. i'm determined about what's go on, and i'm concerned about the intents of foreign countries to make investments and overcome certain credit technologies and

the financial -- we see the improvements they're making. is anyone in your department keeping track of actions by foreign countries that could be hurtful? machine learning, intelligence, anything we know that they've been going through with sabotage? >> the fbi is in the fore of that effort. this budget seeks enhancements of 18 million of their program for watching for this kind of espionage. but also another 5 million for monitoring and upgrading our ability to -- and the sifi process. >> we want to work with you on that. we have tremendous concern. anything i would say, in west

virginia they understand that if we're not allowed to go into china and russia and have investments or owner ships or control over any of their critical infrastructure, why in the world do we allow them to come and use a front in order to have control when the government basically is controlling their -- >> this is one of my highest priorities. >> senator capito. >> thank you, attorney general, for your service. i want to ask about the bureau of prisons. during our shut-down, our correctional officers and staff remained on duty, but we have hazelton in west virginia, and we've had several murders at hazelton, and i'm sure senator manchin has the same thing. we've had complaints from staffing that there are staffing shortages, that it's not safe for our correctional officers. they're being asked to perform

different duties than they were staffed for. is this a problem you're finding across the gop? >> i think this is an area where we have stumbled. i'm looking into this because it's very frustrating to me. i've always supported bureau of prisons in the past and think it's a great organization, and if we're going to have people incarcerated, we need to make sure they're incarcerated under proper conditions. the way i look at it, our authorized level is good and adequate, it's that we're four to five,000 peop thousand peoplf our authorized lefvel. why does that come about? part of that overall number may

be because of the hiring freeze which i lifted yesterday. but those slots were really in the regional and the headquarters. the facility itself was not to freeze. i don't say this in a bad sense, but the way these organizations go about bringing in people, they leave too much of a lead time. so the way it works in the bureau of prison, if the person at this level leaves, the next person moves up, and they don't start the process of hiring a new person until sort of everyone has taken a new chair. then they go out and it takes months and months and months to get that person on board. that makes no sense because every year we lose 2600 of these correctional officers. so my view is we just have to turn on the spigot and just keep these new entry-level people

coming in at a rate where we're going to be able to get up to and maintain our enacted level. so i think this is largely a snafu by the department. >> thank you. i'm glad to hear what you've said in terms of getting more people in, because the ratios are going up and in certain situations can be very dangerous for the officers that are working there. and it discourages people from wanting to stay. it's a tough job. >> it's tough. >> so anything we can do to help on that. i'd like to ask you about the opioid crisis when y. when you came to visit me, we talked about this. it's just a scourge on our country, but really in our particular region. i know that you are increasing the budget in that area, but are there areas that are working better on the disruption part of

the drug interdiction that we need to put more efforts on than being spread out the way we are? >> i can't say that. i think where we are we're having a lot of success, so i think it's taking that and reproducing it elsewhere. as you know, we have essentially a two-pronged strategy. one is to elicit the legal drugs that have been overprescribed and diverted and created this population of people who are addicted, and we have to push that down to a smaller and smaller group. and that -- i know senator manchin mentioned that hot spot. we have a lot of resources now focused on doing that, and i think beer going to be announcing some major successes in doing this. and the other is going after the chief operations in mexico and then the local distribution.

we are adding $254 million of hida money to our budget where it will be administered to dda as well. >> i think when it's used explicitly, that's where the heroin and the fentanyl comes in. now it's crystal meth coming in on the southern border. as a clarification as a non-lawyer here, we hear with the mueller report, we hear a cry from capitol hill to release the entire report. i just want to emphasize what you stated to senator kennedy for those of us who are non-legal. that would be very unprecedented and damaging to just put the whole thing out there and an unreasonable request. am i stating that correctly? >> i don't know if it would be unprecedented since i'm not sure what really happened in the watergate situation.

i know the report came out 50 years later, i think, but -- it's essentially unprecedented, i would say. >> thank you. >> thank you. mr. attorney general, you said something in your response to the question, this subcommittee has been encouraging the department of justice to lift the bop hiring freeze, which the response was, there's been no hiring freeze and you just announced you eliminated it yesterday. >> that's departmentwide as well. there has been a hiring freeze since 2017. >> the hiring freeze at gop has been lifted for a while. >> it has. thank you for that. >> mr. attorney general, i gather from your testimony that if you were a judge, you would find against the position the doj is taking in the aoc cases, is that right? >> i didn't say that.

>> you said your recommendation within the administration was a judge would likely conclude with this position, but you said a client would take the position. did i misunderstand the question? >> i was talking in general. >> yes, your assessment within the administration was if you were a judge, you would not find in favor of the case -- >> whatever advice i gave the administration would have initially been my personal view as to the best legal -- >> in your personal view, if you were a judge, you've told them that you would not support the case. is that the administration's position? isn't that what happened internally? >> i'm not going to say what my advice was in the internal deliberations. >> i think it was clear in your testimony. you said they still had some basis for going forward. let me ask you with regard to the mueller report in your march

24 letter. you said mueller set out evidence on both sides of the question. it's unresolved what the special counsel views as what could be obstruction. do you agree with bob mueller that the evidence is, in fact, presenting complicated issues of laws of fact on those matters? >> i'm not going to comment on it until the report is out. >> i'm not asking you for what's in the report. you sent a letter to. nine states' congress that included somethin thg nine states' congress that included something nine states' congress that included somethit nine states' congress that included somethih

nine states' congress that included somethie nine states' congress that included something in the report about whether he's obstructed justice, and i'm asking if that is something you will ask mr. mueller. >> that's not something i'm going to deal with. >> you said, along with mueller, that he was not exonerated of obstruction of justice. do you agree with mueller in fact? >> i'm not going to comment on my thoughts. >> but you put forth your view of the report, correct? nobody asked you to do that. >> i didn't put my review. >> you made a comment of obstruction of justice that's not contained in the mueller report. i'm just asking you, when you looked at the evidence, did you agree with mueller and his team that there are different laws in fact? >> i told you i'm going to explain my decision, and to the

extent that requires any assessment of the mueller report, i'll say that when the mueller report is oucht. >> did your decision ask you to look at the question of intent with regard to the president of the united states? >> i'm not going to discuss that. i'll put it in the report when i lay it out. >> the president tweeted yesterday he was exonerated. that wasn't based on the mueller report of no obstruction of justice, that was on march 24th. and now you won't elaborate at all as to how you reached that conclusion. i'm not asking what's in the mueller report, i'm asking about your conclusion. >> you said conclusion. it was a conclusion of a number of people, including me, and i obviously am the attorney general. it was also a conclusion of attorney general rod rosenstein, and i will discuss that decision after the report is out. >> did bob mueller support your

conclusion? >> i don't know whether bob mueller supported my conclusion. >> in your june 2018 memo, you indicate that a president can commit obstruction of justice in the classic sense, of sabotaging the proceedings' truth-finding functions. did you see any evidence in this report about whether or not president trump committed what you call a classic sense of obstruction of justice? >> i'm not going to characterize or discuss the contents of the report. the report will be made public hopefully next week. i will come up and testify at that point about that. >> the thing about it is, mr. attorney general, you put your conclusion out there. now you refuse to talk about any basis of your conclusion. i'm not asking you about what's in the report. last question. can you say that the evidence

established by the department of justice will be in the mueller report? can you assure us that the key factual evidence in the mueller report related to charges of obstruction of justice will be available in the public report? >> i believe it will, and that's one of the reasons why i want to review it after -- you know, when the redaction team is done making the redactions to make sure there is nothing in there that would prevent that. and by the way, redactions can cut both ways. >> my last question relates to the redaction process. my understanding from the house testimony was you're allowing the mueller team to make redactions in three of the four areas you mentioned, all of them except for intelligence. is that a correct understanding of your testimony yesterday? in other words, you're leaving the discretion to them on three of the four criteria that you mapped out. >> i have stated what the categories are and the people implementing it are the justice

lawyers with the special counsel's lawyers. they're implementing those categories. >> you're not going to overrule the special counsel's judgment on those categories, right? >> i haven't. >> and if it comes up? >> if the issues come up, i'm not going to prejudge it, that's not my intention. my intention is to make sure the people in the department are making those redactions. >> senator bode. >> thank you for your service, attorney general. in this opioid epidemic, and not just that, we have an opioid epidemic but we have an addiction epidemic, and in arkansas we're number two in prescribing.

literally we have 3 million people. we've had hundreds of millions of pills prescribed last year. so your team, i understand, has made a ranking. but i'd like to come up with new strategies in order to do that. if we provide you additional resources, do you have any ideas as to anything different that we can do than we're doing now? we're making a dent, but 72,000 deaths last year. you know, these are statistics. sadly, we're spending a lot of money, but i don't know that we're having great success. >> i do think we're having so some -- starting to see some good results. i think the initial data suggests we finally started seeing an increase in opioid overdose deaths. it seems to be leveling out.

>> part of that is just the ability to have the norkind? my understanding is the drug dealers are carrying it to keep their clients alive. that's part of that. i don't know what the statistic would be if we didn't have that. >> we are making progress on reducing diversion and overprescription of the drugs. we are locking up a lot of health care providers and we're bringing lots of civil actions -- >> i applaud you for that. >> -- and we're now applying technology a lot more to detecting places where there is suspicious patterns of overprescription and so forth and attacking it aggressively. the first part of the strategy, which is to get that addicted

population off the addictive drugs, we're making some progress. on the illicit drugs, we have to deal with the traffic coming up from mexico. mexico is our drug supplier, all kinds of drugs. and the organization -- the organizations in mexico are very formidable criminal enterprises. and we have to address that problem to stop the flow of these really deadly drugs and increasingly deadly drugs, the fentanyl mixed in with all other kinds of drugs so people don't really know what they're taking. we have to stop the flow of drugs from mexico or make a much bigger dent in it. that's one of the reasons that i do think that a wall, a barrier system across the southern border is an important part of that. >> another part of that is the mail.

our postal inspectors are doing a good job, there just isn't a whole lot of them. in the past, the intraoperability hasn't been there. i wish you would look into that. you mentioned the southern border. i agree with you on that. the mail from china and getting these shipments and distributing them to the rest of the country from someplace here is a huge problem. >> the fbi has a great what we call j-code, which is starting to get some big successes on internet trafficking of drugs. and i think tackling both the dark net and the regular internet and these online and policing the mails is a very important part of it. and we are now applying the technology to get a lot more progress on these online dealers. on the mail front, there are

some sensing technologies coming along that are very successful in being able to intercept them. >> finally, one of the tools i think is effective are the drug courts. the d.a. is doing that now, others are doing that. the ability to have people stay clean, support ing their familis which most of them do. that's a great asset and i hope you would support that, and that's a way i think we can also make a dent. >> i very much support the drug courts, the veterans courts, and there's $75 million in our budget for those, so we'll continue to support that. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> approximately 15 minutes we have a vote, a set of votes of three. senator coons is next followed by senator graham, senator shots

and senator feinstein. we will conclude shortly after the role is called. senator coons. sdp >> thank you, attorney general barr, for being here. i have many questions about the budget but i first will turn to questions that i think are urgent concerning the special counsel's report. the primary purpose for the special counsel's report was to provide a clear and effective conclusion in a report to the american people. i'm concerned that over the last three weeks your actions have created some confusion and distrust around the process and look forward to the imminent release of as much of that report as you can to the american people and to congress. you stated that the redacted portions of the special report will be color-coded and explained the basis for redactions. will those notes reflect which category was applied or provide

some information to congress about the specific justification for redactions? you mentioned you envisioned a situation where congress, under the appropriate safeguards, could verify the redaction categories weren't abused. can you tell me something about the safeguards you had in mind? >> you know, i don't know how detailed the descriptions will be. some of them may be just generic, but some of them may be able to provide additional information. so, for example, if there is a gag order in a case that says, you know, apart from whatever we feel about impinging on the case, there is a gag order that would be implicated by release, i expect that that will be put in. >> and are those safeguards likely to be worked out with the chair and ranking judiciary? >> in terms of the safeguard, for example, an easy one in my view is the classified information. i would just want to make sure they're adequate safeguards and shared with a limited number of people, that kind of thing, the

thing we would normally do in this situation. >> i was struck that the district court of the district of columbia recently revealed that the grand jury by mueller has not completed its investigation. did anyone tell the special counsel to conclude his investigation and submit a report before it was complete? >> i didn't. >> did anyone else, to your knowledge? >> not that i'm aware of. >> there are press accounts that members of the special counsel's team, its investigators, prepared summaries for public release of sections of the report. why did you summarize the principal conclusions reached by the special counsel and results of the investigation rather than releasing some of these prepared for public release summaries? >> actually, deputy attorney general rosenstein and i were

expecting a report that would make it very easy for us to determine what had to be taken out and what wasn't, and that's not how the report came to us. so i immediately roilsecognizedt there was going to be some significant lag time between our receipt of the report and when we could actually get it out. and decided that -- none of it was releasable as i received it. every page on it had a warning that it contain certain material. >> a warning. >> i'm just saying i thought it was important to just advise the country as to what the bottom line conclusions were. i was not interested -- even if

i had summaries available, which i did not on sunday, that were vetted, i wouldn't have put out summaries, because i think summaries, no matter who is preparing them, are going to be subject to criticism. people have to remember that generally the department of justice does come out with binary conclusions. and so just stating the bottom line on each of those, i think, was entirely appropriate. >> who, if anyone outside the justice department, has seen portions or all of the special counsel's report? has anyone in the white house seen any of the report? >> i'm not going to -- as i said, i'm landing the plane right now, and i've been willing to discuss my letters and the process going forward, but the report is going to be out next week and i'm just not going to get into the details of the process until the plane is on the ground. >> at what point will you allow congress to know whether or not the white house was given the full report, briefed on the

report, shared sections of the report? it is striking the president claimed complete and total exoneration if he didn't either see the report or was briefed on the report. >> as i said, you know, once the report is out, i'm happy to discuss the process. >> i very much look forward to that. given -- my last question. given your unsolicited june 8 letter to the justice department regarding obstruction of justice, did you ever consider recusing yourself from making a conclusion about whether a charge of obstruction of justice should have been made? >> well, i consulted with the career ethics officials at the department. >> and they concluded that your memo on the topic did not require your recusement? >> that's correct. senator graham, the chairman has been very consistent in saying he's not going to disclose anything until he's in

frupt of your committ front of your committee. >> right, but you can't deny that without the president seeing it, he won't commit to anything. h >> did you pick a winning lottery ticket to be here with him? >> i can tell you the last time we had full sequestration in 2013, the department had $1.3 billion at risk. people at the fbi, the rest of our law enforcement agencies, the bureau of prisons, all those agencies had their funding impacted, their staffing impacted, people were at risk for furlough. we had to move several hundred million dollars into our s & e

accounts to keep people working. sequestration had a tremendous, tremendous impact on the department of justice. it took tremendous work to avoid the detrimental effects of sequestration. >> do you believe if we go back down that road, it would make us less safe? >> i believe it would curtail the safety operations of the department of justice and its national security operations. >> thank you. mr. attorney general, i'm sure you share that assessment? we'll see that mostly on may 1st, but i am intrigued by a working group or some group looking at the other side of a ledger. do you agree with me that every american should be concerned as to whether or not a warrant was obtained against an american citizen with unverified information? >> absolutely. i think, you know, the fourth amendment is one of our most cherished civil liberties. >> so you think that's an

appropriate thing to look at, and you will look at it? >> yes. >> do you share my concern that if you're going to open up a counter-intelligence investigation against a presidential candidate that you have to have a very good reason? >> yes. absolutely. >> and a counter-intelligence investigation is designed to protect the target of foreign influence, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> it's not a prosecutorial function, is it? >> no. unless espionage or some violation of espionage develops. >> so would it be odd that the candidate was never really briefed by the department of justice that your campaign may be targeted by a foreign entity? >> that is one of the questions i have, is that i feel normally the campaign would have been advised of this. >> and can you think of a good reason right now why they wouldn't have been? >> i'm interested in getting that answer. they had two foreign u.s.

attorneys, chris christie and rudy giuliani, involved in the campaign, and i don't understand why the campaign wasn't advised. >> apparently when senator feinstein had a person on her staff that was opposed to the chinese government, she was briefed. is that the way you normally do things with the counter-intelligence investigation? she was briefed about a staff member that they thought might be connected to chinese government, and she took action and fired the guy. is that sort of what you're supposed to be doing? >> if i were attorney general and that situation came up, i would say, yes, brief the target of the foreign espionage activity. >> so you're pledging to this committee, and i guess the country as a whole, is to find out what happened with the warrant application, find out about the counter-intelligence investigation to make sure that the law was followed and if there was any abuse in the law to report to congress and the

public. is that accurate? >> that's accurate. i just want to satisfy myself that there were no abuse of law enforcement or intelligence powers. >> i'm glad you're doing that. when it comes to mr. mueller, are you talking to him about the 6e material? >> i haven't specifically talked to him about the 6e material. >> when it comes to investigations, you're machi ma sure prosecutions are in order, that they know what's going on? >> yes. >> senator shotz. >> thank you, mr. attorney general, for being here. i want to give you a chance to

rephrase something you said, because i think when the word spying is used, it is unprovocative, and in my case, inflammatory. i know what you're getting at because you have explained yourself in terms of answering senator graham's questions and the questions of others. do you want to rephrase what you're doing? because i think the word spying could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out, and i think it's necessary for you to be precise with your language here. you normally are and i want to give you a chance to be especially precise here. >> i don't know all the connotations of that word you're referring to, but unauthorized surveillance. i want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance. sdp >> thank you. >> is that more appropriate in your mind?

>> that's your call. i wanted to give you a chance to say it how you wanted to say it and make sure you didn't misspeak. you talked a long time yesterday, and i want to make sure you use the words you want to use. >> okay. >> on the mueller team summaries within the report, i get that on every page there was a sort of admonition that this may contain 6e material. the question i have relates to your desire to make sure that the whole thing is intelligible. are these summaries, when the report is released, going to be intelligible? i assume there may be some redactions, there may be none, but i think the basic thing for the public is are we going to get the gist of this? or is it going to be on january 15, and then you have to flip 15 pages to find the next text? >> you will get more than you

need. >> i want to ask you about the cole memorandum. in your confirmation hearing, you said, i'm not going to go after companies that have lied on the cole memorandum. are you planning on restoring it, are you planning on establishing your new guidance? i heard what you said about marijuana generally, but those are public policy questions. assuming we can't come to an agreement on a new statutory framework, what's the plan for the department of justice? >> i'm going to have to make some difficult choices. >> do you care to elaborate? >> for instance, alliance suggest people who have already taken action based on the cole memorandum. i mean, one open question in my mind is if states continue to pass these laws, are we going to continue to forbear in those new states? i would like to see congress address this issue. >> is there any internal guidance regarding these sort of

difficult questions? >> none that i've given. >> so the department of justice is working without guidance? >> the department of justice is operating under my general guidance that i am accepting the cole memorandum for now, but i have generally left it up to the u.s. attorneys in each state to determine what the best approach is in that state? i haven't heard any complaints from the states that have legalized marijuana. >> a year ago attorney general sessions said, we're moving forward and we will add fairly soon additional suppliers under the controlled substances act. i just have two follow-up letters. where are they on this? >> i have been pushing very hard over the last few weeks to get that process underway, and i

think we're going to move forward on it. i think it's very important to get these additional supplies. >> can you assure me i won't be here a year later asking the same question? >> yes. >> thank you. on defending the aca, how often has the department of justice declined to defend a federal statute? >> you know, it's happened -- i can't give you a number. >> is it fair to say it's infrequent? >> it's infrequent but it happens, and it happens under different kinds of circumstances. the obama administration refused to defend. >> sure. i think that's the only one, and i think that's sort of telling that as policy, you try to make these choices as infrequently as possible, and under the obama administration, they refused to defend the defense of marriage act, and under the trump administration, you're refusing

to defend the affordable care act. so it sort of has to rise to a level of political and public policy importance that supercedes the judgment of a lot of career attorneys. would you agree with that? >>. >> well, i'm not sure it's a question of career attorneys or non-career attorneys. there are frequently disputes between lawyers whether they're career or non-career. >> i yield. >> senator feinstein? >> mr. attorney general, i'm really surprised by the answer, because the supreme court did p uphold the law, the aca. and now the attorney general is saying, we will not defend it regardless. it seems to me that that's a

probl problem, that if something is duly passed and upheld as legal, the attorney general has a duty to defend it. >> well, the law was originally upheld because the mandate was upheld as a tax. and chief justice roberts' opinion said that it can be upheld as a tax even though it couldn't otherwise be upheld. but for finding it a tax, you would have had five votes against it. once the penalty was removed, the financial penalty was removed, that provision could no longer be justified as a tax, which means that it would have to fall. so the mandate fell. the mandate, in my opinion -- i don't think it's even a close question the mandate was unconstitutional, because it could no longer be upheld as a

tax. then the question becomes if the mandate falls even though there was no penalty attached to it, what's its impact on the rest of the statute? four of the justices in the nfib felt that the whole statute had to fall. so as i said before you arrived, senator, at the end of the day, i felt that this was a defensible legal position to take. >> in my experience, which i guess i've been here 26 years, i've never seen this before, that a decision like this would be made while one individual on the basis of what has been a huge decision legislatively and signed by a president based on -- i'm not sure quite what, despite what you said. >> who was the one individual?

me? >> no, no. >> okay. >> you misunderstood what i said, but it's not important. so you're saying despite the fact that the supreme court of the united states upheld what has been a major law duly passed, duly signed by the president that you're just not going to defend it. >> that does happen. it happens occasionally in our system. i think the principal ovle over the department of justice is, our default position, our preference, is to defend statutes. even if we don't agree with the statutes and even if we think the argument is a weak argument. for example, the last time i was in the justice department, i thought the flag statute was unconstitutional, but we defended it, the no burning of the flag.

we defended it. we lost because justice burns -- >> why won't you defend this? >> basically the determines tha another position should be taken. >> is this determined by the white house? >> it's determined by the process within the executive branch. there are a number of agencies, a number of different players even in the white house that get involved in these things. >> well, i assume you wouldn't take this position unless this is what the president wanted. because -- >> that would be a safe assumption. >> this is a mega law, you know, it affects pre-existing conditions, it affects everybody in the united states, it's not -- it went through a great deal of hearing and testimony and amendment and passage. >> it was a very controversial law. >> exactly.

but it's a big law. >> right. >> and it's been operational for a period of time. and people depend on it. millions of people, for their health care. and so all of a sudden, along comes, and i, this is just my frame of, way of saying, somebody, and oh, i'm going to take this whole thing on, and -- >> well there were 20, i think, or more states that were challenging it, i mean it's, there was a lot of opposition to it, a lot of states have weighed in, and i think the administration is on the side of those states. as i said yesterday, i think people should start to take a deep breath. if this is such a whacky position, that the administration is taking, then there is nothing to fear, right? >> well -- >> then the law will be upheld.

>> in 26 years, i've never seen this kind of thing. and -- >> well doha, we mentioned that before, i know it doesn't, you know, it happens rarely in each administration but i'd be surprised if not any administration, you know, most administrations, from from time to time, declined to -- >> i don't want to take the time. maybe we can discuss this, because this struck me like lightning, that, you know, one person decides, i assume the president, wants you to, made this decision, and everything that was done by way of proper legislative action has been taken and signature of a president, i just don't ever recall anything like this happening in the past quarter of a century. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator feinstein. >> i have a follow-up question.

so does senator shaheen. then we'll wrap up. i want to go back to something you said in your testimony that you've indicated that there's the possibility that unauthorized surveillance or spying occurred, and my question is, maybe two-fold, my question is, what is the basis for reaching that conclusion, or a belief that something like that occurred, and what are the consequences for those who committed unauthorized surveillance? >> did you say that i said that it occurred? >> you indicated, i think, i tried to at least reflect on what your quote was, that you thought spying on a political campaign occurred in the course of an intelligence agency's investigation into russian interference in 2016. >> well, i thought the question was, did i have any basis for saying that. >> i'm now asking what the basis was, or what the facts are that lead to you that thought.

>> i felt, i am concerned about it, and i was asked if there was any basis for it and i believe there is a bis sis for my concern, but i'm not going to discuss the basis. >> and what potential consequences for those who violated the law? >> it depends what the facts ultimately prove to be. >> which would be determined in a prosecution? >> possibly. but, you know, there are also, there can be abuses that may not arise to the level of a crime, but that, you know, people might think is bad, and want to put in rules or prophylaxis against it. i remember when there was a lot of, you know, people upset at the fbi, you know, spying on, or surveilling civil rights groups, or anti-war groups, or nuclear freeze groups, and so forth, and as a result of that, there are a lot of safeguards built in.

there are also concerns about surveilling reporters and so safeguards had been put in. so it doesn't necessarily have to result in a criminal investigation or a finding of a crime. but part of my responsibility is to protect the civil liberties of the american people, and i think, i think something that is important is that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies respect the limits on their power. >> i share that view with you, mr. general, and i'm of the same generation in which those things occurred and were alleged to have occurred. senator shaheen? >> yes, mr. chairman, i remember that, too, and i remember when jay edgar hoover's fbi surveilled student groups as well. having been in one of those student groups that was surveilled. i want to ask a couple of what i hope will be very short questions. over the past two years, the subcommittee in congress has

provided record levels of funding of violence against women and true of the omnibus as well and we have not reauthorized the violence against women act and i want to be reassured that the justice department despite this lapsed authorization will continue to provide the funding that has been appropriated by congress. >> absolutely. >> i support the reauthorization of the act. >> yes, thank you. i hope you will share that with some members of your administration. >> i haven't seen any specific vehicle for that, but in concept, i certainly support it, and would like to see it done. >> thank you. the other question i have is that the prior attorney general issued a number of memos and during his tenure, that provided guidelines for everything from sentencing, for u.s. attorneys, on drug offenses, to immigration policy, to each the protective

detail for secretary devos. do you intend to review any of those memos and should we expect that there might be a different outcome from your review after ha? and i have a particular specific question because that is around the issue of quotas for immigration judges, and whether you believe that judges should have, both federal judges an immigration judges, should have quotas around the number of cases that they are expected to get through in a period of time? >> you want the specific or the general question? both? >> both would be nice. >> both? i've been in the job seven weeks and i haven't put in process a thing of reviewing all of the stuff, and so right now, it is just a question of something being brought to my attention. and you know, i haven't looked at that particular guidance. but i do, you know, i understand that it is important to understand our metrics and how productive our judges are. so we can figure out how to

manage the case loads, and certainly i would be not happy with hard and fast quotas, it has to why enough give in them, that people can take into account the, you know, the factors that could go into productivity, such as the complication of the case, and things like that. >> okay. thank you. >> and can i add one thing on the protective details? >> yes. >> there is a million in this budget for the u.s. marshalls to do a, basically a feasibility look at providing executive branch-wide protective details, based on real threat assessments. that's an expertise of the marshalls. i think people think highly of the marshals' capabilities in that area. on behest of the department, to take a look at doing it executive branch wide, it would take resources for the marshalls if they go in that direction but we have been asked to take a look at it and that's what that million in the budget is all about. >> thank you. i appreciate that.

are there, is there a reason to believe that there are more valid threats against members of this administration, or in the executive branch now than there has been in the past? >> that's not something i can, i don't have that information, i don't know, the way the question came to us, was simply take a group that does judicial and executive protection, as their profession, who does real professional threat assessments, and looks at this, and have a group like that take a look at it for the administration. >> thank you. >> mr. chairman, could i just add one point of clarification. >> please. >> that i just want to make it clear, thinking back on all of the different colloquies here, that i am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. i'm saying that i am concerned about it, and looking into it. that's all. >> thank you. i'll give you both a chance to clarify anything that you said

earlier. i want to highlight, i mentioned this in my opening statement, and in other times, other circumstances, this would have been a more significant topic of conversation in this hearing, but there are a number of requests by the department of justice related to immigration that are included in the conversations that we will be having, as far as the appropriations for the department of justice, d.o.j. has requested a $110 million increase above the enacted 19 levels to fun 100 new immigration judges and 50 additional positions including 100 attorneys and 100 judicial law clerks. in addition to that, as you indicated the marshall request, there is a request for $32 million for federal prisoner detention programs to support housing and transportation, care for federal detainees that are not criminals but are within the immigration system, awaiting

adjudication. or following adjudication. and the office of solicitor general, the environmental and natural resource division, as well as the southwest border rural law enforcement violent crime reduction initiative, i wanted to give you a chance, if you cared to indicate something about these issues, and their importance to the currents circumstance we find ourselves in, related to immigration. mr. general? >> yes, i mean absolutely, we need those additional resources, especially the additional judges to process the backlog. right now, the, even though our judges are being very productive, in deciding these cases, the pipeline is actually greater than their productivity. >> there is 800 and some thousand cases. >> 860,000. >> in addition, i would highlight for you the importance of electronic records, and moving forward, with getting the department in this regard out of the paper world, and on to

computers. my opportunity to every witness that appears before my committee is to say, and mr. attorney general, you're always very sir s couple specircumspect so if so doubt this applies to you but if there is something you want to alter, aeld, correct, or ag you would like us to say, we would welcome you to do so. >> no, i mean after i, if i review the transcript and see a problem, i'll let you know. >> i wish it worked that way. thank you very much for your presence here today. thank you for the information that you conveyed to us. senator shaheen and i are grateful. if there are no further questions, this, is it the afternoon, if there are no further questions this afternoon, senators may submit additional questions for the subcommittee's official hearing record, we would request the department of justice respond within 30 day, as i indicated we value your efforts to accomplish that in the past. the subcommittee now stands in recess.

we'll have attorney general william barr's testimony from today's senate appropriations subcommittee on our companion network c-span 2, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. the complete guide to congress is now available. it has lots of details about the house and senate for the current session of congress. contact and bio information about every senator and representative. plus, information about congressional committees. state governors. and the cabinet. the 2019 congressional directory is a handy spiral-bound guide. order your copy from the c-span online