mr. barr's dangerous views on surveillance and his contempt for surveillance law and the fourth amendment. it's my view that this is not a partisan issue. there has been for some years a bipartisan coalition here in the senate that has battled to protect the privacy and constitutional rights of americans. but mr. barr's views, after i've laid them out today, ought to frighten every member of this senate. what mr. barr has said, whether the congress supports broader or narrower surveillance authorities, and regardless of whether congress votes for more checks and balances and oversight, mr. barr has said it really doesn't matter. he has made that judgment based on the proposition which he has stated very clearly that the president can essentially do what he wants. this nominee, in my view, poses a unique threat to the rule of law and the fourth amendment. his long-held views which presumably he would put in practice if confirmed, threaten the very notion that the congress or the courts have any

some comfort i hope is that mr. barr said if he's the attorney general he'll pursue red flag legislation and i'm working on it with mr. blumenthal and others that would allow law enforcement if they have appropriate information to go and deny somebody a gun who is showing dangerous behavior. i think that's a real gap in our law. most of these cases people are screaming before they act and we're just not listening. the guy down in florida did everything but take an ad out in the paper i'm going to kill somebody and it would have been nice if the police could have stopped it before it happened. as to dylann roof, he applied for a guy in west columbia, south carolina, and the system said he has been arrested. during the three days of looking into the arrest he has not been convicted and the fbi agent called the wrong solicitor's office and they did not find out that he had been possessing and using a substance that would have kept him from owning a gun. so we need to reform the laws, but that was sort of a mistake more than

it is clear, based on the record, that mr. barr intends to follow mr. sessions down the same regressive anti-civil rights roadmap. the confirmation of william barr, who espouses former attorney general sessions' policies, would enormously exacerbate our nation's current civil rights crisis. when we submitted evidence to the commission -- comments to the commission on civil rights ssues, they were as follows -- overturning a memo from eric holder aimed at avoiding mandatory sentencing, disproportionately subjecting minorities to incarceration. abandoning the smart on crime initiative, ending the community oriented services collaborative reform project, a justice department program that helped build trust between police officers and the communities they serve. announcing the justice department school safety plan that neutralizes schools -- military rises schools, offering consent decrees as related to police conduct. nothing but a subterfuge to undermine a crucial tool in the justice department's efforts to ensure accountable policing. mr. barr has a troub

mr. barr, he's learned a lesson, as well, and i hope that will come out in further questions. >> are you leaning to confirm? >> i'm still steady where i stand. >> all right. i think he's going to do just fine. i had a joke that if i had 10 minutes to live i would want to do it in the judiciary committee. did aght the committee good job of asking questions that were relevant to the position of being attorney general. i think the mueller situation asked a lot. i think he gave good answers about his view of bob mueller and the importance of letting this thing play out. for lynch not because i greeted with that agree with their political philosophy -- not because i agree with their political philosophy. one thing i heard in the hearing that i hope is not going to , if you don'td agree with my policy choices or my agenda, then you are not qualified. that's not the issue. you do expect an attorney general to fairly enforce the law and the nature that congress speaks, they follow, they are not rogue

mr. barr sa lawyer who previously served as attorney general during the george h.w. bush administration. >>> i recognize senator white house. thank you, mr. barr. >> the hearing will come to order. i recognize senator white house. thank you, mr. barr. thank you, chairman. this is my first chance at a committee hearing to >> congratulate you on taking the gavel here. we worked well together when you were chairman of the crime and terrorism sub committee, and i hope that will . mr. barr, welcome. did you make it a condition of taking this job that rod rosenstein had to go? just to be clear so we're not bandying words here, did you request or signal or otherwise communicate in any way that you wanted rod rosenstein to go? >> no. the president said that the decision on the deputy was mine, anything i wanted to do on the deputy was mine. >> we will find no william barr fingerprints on rosenstein's departure? >> no. rod and i have been talking about his plans. he told me that he viewed it as a two-y

mr. barr. >> thank you, chairman. this is my first chance at a committee hearing to congratulate you on taking the gavel here. we worked well together when you were chairman of the crime and terrorism sub committee, and i hope that will continue here. mr. barr, welcome. did you make it a condition of taking this job that rod rosenstein had to go? just to be clear so we're not bandying words here, did you request or signal or otherwise communicate in any way that you wanted rod rosenstein to go? >> no. the president said that the decision on the deputy was mine, anything i wanted to do on the deputy was mine. >> we will find no william barr fingerprints on rosenstein's departure? >> no. rod and i have been talking about his plans. he told me that he viewed it as a two-year stint and would like to use if i'm confirmed, my coming in as an occasion to leave, but we talked about the need for a transition, and i asked him if he would stay for a while, and he said he would, and so as of right now, i

mr. barr is concerned, is the fact that our nation's former solicitor general just said, god, i hope the president isn't a russian asset. >> i heard it. it is the particular situation we are in that hangs over this entire hearing, which in some ways is why this is always, in the worst case scenario, felt potentially bigger than watergate, because it's an international watergate, because it's a national security watergate, because it's a watergate that implicates a former nuclear-armed power that already, according to this mueller probe, was actively taking these measures to both intrude in the election, interfere, and try to co-opt americans. all of that hangs over here. i think that's why this week feels very real. when you look at what happened behind me, and as you said, we'll see how quickly the senators refill their seats, one thing that we haven't touched on much had our coverage which i think is significant is bill barr trying to explain or clean up his conflicting accounts of the james

thank you very much, mr. barr. >> senator hirano. >> shoe very much. mr. barr, you've written and spoken about morality and your worries about the destruction of and i'm quoting you any kind of moral consensus in society and you wrote quite extensively on this when you were attorney general. you've been described as an institutionalist, someone who cares about the department of justice and the government. that's a good thing. but you've agreed to work for someone who relentlessly attacks the press, calling them fake news, and the enemy of the people. the president criticizes the fbi nonstop. he belittles generals, he calls the mueller investigation a witch-hunt, he believes the claims of putin over the judgment of our intelligence community and has been objectively verified that he lies every single day and changes his mind on a regular basis. so are you concerned having written about morality and consensus in our society, are you concerned about the way donald trump undermines the institutions in our society that help us to maintain a moral consensus? >> n

mr. barr, there are no shortage of corrupt trump haters to investigate and many with a lot of power that they have abused. no shortage of crimes here. tonight we are going to begin to lay out a road map of corruption for the new attorney general to be. our own gregg jarrett has compiled a comprehensive list. to start, we are not go through the full list tonight, with fisa abuse. that is lying to a fisa court. that is committing a fraud against a court to get a warrant to spy on a trump campaign associate using hillary clinton's bought and paid for phony dossier that was full of russian lies. t look at your screen. james comey, andrew mccabe, sally yates, rod rosenstein all likely committed fraud on a fisa court presentinget hillary clinton's dirty dossier as unbiased, verify in evidence, when in reality, it was never verified, never corroborated, and full of russian lies, and they never told the courts that it was bought and paid for by hillary clinton. next up, mr. barr, you getxt this job, y

and what i heard from mr. barr, he's learned a lesson, as well, and i hope that will come out in further questions. >> and are you leaning to confirm mr. barr? >> i'm not a leaner yet. i'm still steady where i stand. >> thank you. >>> c-span network continuing our coverage today of this nomination hearing, the hearing for the nominee to be the new attorney general, william barr, former attorney general during the presidency of george h.w. bush. currently senators are voting on the floor of the senate. we'll resume our live coverage. and if you missed some of the hearing, would like to see it again, 9:00 eastern on c-span any time you like on our website, c-span.org. let's take you back to a bit earlier today with the opening statement from william barr speaking to this senate judiciary committee. >> raise your right hand, please. do you affirm that the testimony you are about to give to this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god? >> i do. >> the floor is yours. >> b

-- general, mr. barr, and i think they have a great relationship. i haven't spoken to the deputy attorney general myself, so i'll leave any announcements for him or the president to make when they want to do that, but certainly i don't think there's any willingness by the president or the white house to push him out. my guess is that he is making room for the new attorney general to build a team that he wants around him. eans iowans sarah, there was some discrepancies with some numbers. you had said border officials detained 4,000 suspected terrorists last year, and the customs and border patrol revealed the real numbers, and only six people on the security watch list were detained over six months. we wanted to ask you about that. why the inflated figure? >> i should have said 4,000 at all points of entry, not just at the southern border. the bottom line is whether it's one, four, fourteen or four thousand, one terrorists coming into our country in illegal fashion to do us harm one too many, and we have to take every step possible to prevent that fr

. >> mr. barr, thinking back about the run up to the 2016 election, where the nominee of both political parties for president of the united states ended up being investigated by the fbi, can you think of any precedent in american history where that's occurred that you know of? >> no, i can't, senator. >> thinking back to james comey's press conference of july 7th, 2016, where he took the step of talking about the evidence against mrs. clinton, talking about the legal standard that would apply as to whether she might or might not be indicted for committing a crime under the espionage act, have you ever seen a situation where an fbi director would usurp the authority of the department of justice to make that charging decision and hold a press conference and talk about all of the derogatory information that the investigation had gleaned against a potential defendant and then say now we're not going to -- no reasonable prosecutor would tindict here. have you ever seen that happen before? >> i've never

plus, mr. barr defending his decision to write a memo critiquing the mueller probe and even discussed his opinion of robert mueller. >> do you believe mr. mueller would be involved in a witch hunt against anybody? >> i don't. i don't believe mr. mueller would be involved in a witch hunt. >> some have said, on both sides of the aisle, that it looks like a job application. i also think over the past 18 months you, rather harshly, prejudged the investigation and some of your writings. >> do trust him to be fair to the president and the country as a whole? >> yes. that's ludicrous. if i wanted the job and was going after the job, there are many more direct ways of me bringing myself to the president's intention. >> you also publicly criticize the russian probe. >> however i criticize the russian probe? >> you don't have any criticism close to mexico not at all. >> melissa: chief intelligence course on an catherine herridge is live on that with the latest. >> we are just in the pods right now of those co

i also hope mr. barr, if he's our attorney general, will release whatever is found, good or bad, from this inquiry for the american people to see it. that's part of our democratic process. >> senator, are youon

>> thank you, mr. barr. i think what we have left on our side is kennedy, blackburn and tillis and senator booker. harris. anybody else? i think that's it. and end of round one. so, senator kennedy. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. barr, do you know of any instance in which anybody has tried to interfere in mr. mueller's investigation? >> no, i'm not in the department of justice, and i have no -- i'm not privy to that information, but i don't know of any. >> i understand you know mr. mueller. do you? >> yes, i do. >> is he big enough to take care of himself? >> he's a marine. >> someone had tried to interfere with his investigation, based on your knowledge of mr. mueller, would he have something to say about it, including but not limited to in a court layoof law? >> yes, senator. >> i want to try to cut through some of the innuendo here. did president trump instruct or ask you once you become attorney general to fire robert mueller? >> absolutely not. >> did he ask you to interfere in mr. mueller's investigat

mr. barr's personal relationship with mr. mueller. >> sean: so am i. you are not? >> look, the bottom line here there was no trump collusion but there was hillary fbi department of justice collusion and four people on mueller's special counsel team involved. >> sean: and also we know that they literally lied to fisa court and committed fraud. all right, when we come back, whoopi goldberg going

a very simple question, because mr. barr seems rational, was it lindsey graham who is responsible for setting up his nomination? what do you mean by that? who suggested it? it seems to have lindsey graham's fingerprints on it in a good way. it is so rational as opposed to any of president trump's staff. lindsey graham after the hearing on tuesday said he thought there was nobody more qualified that he could think of on the republican side for this nomination. that includes himself. he was talked about being attorney general. he said that mr. barr was more qualified. lindsey graham has been one of trump's most outspoken people on the hill. he met privately and got a lot of private meetings with the president in the last few weeks. i do have any inside information about why he suggested bar or if that came to be. i get the sense that lindsey graham is glad it's not him. he thinks there will be a part -- bipartisan vote. north carolina is next. good morning. good morning. i have a couple of questions for the gentleman. he is in

mr. barr was unclear on that. i think he doesn't really know. don't know whether it's a statute or a protocol or a rule. to me, this is an unusual circumstance and i think mr. mueller ought to write his report knowing that it's going to be released to the american people and then everybody can make up their own mind. >> so yesterday you bucked republican senator leadership and the will of the administration and voted to proceed on a bill that would keep sanctions in place on oleg derpaska. >> i think he's a gangster. what he does is an abomination. i want to give secretary mnuchin credit. he worked hard on the rule and truly believes mr. deraposka no longer has control of the company. but mr. deraposka is a shareholder in the company with respect to which the secretary wants to remove sanctions. these oligarchs in russia control companies different than others. they don't necessarily have to have all the stock to control the company. i just think it is a closed case and i can't in good conscience vote to lift sanctions on him. >> what message do

that is totally contrary to what mr. barr wrote in his 19 page memo. these are the kinds of very specific commitments i would want from mr. barr. >> when the nominee says, he has said he wants the mueller investigation to reach its conclusion, he will not interfere. when he says he wants the report or results of the investigation to go public, do you believe him? >> that's what he's saying. i will probe that a little more as to what constitutes. he didn't say he would make the report public, something within the law. yes, i would want that report to be made public, i would not want him to just summarize it. i would want to get a clear commitment from him that that report will be made completely public. he's a lawyer and he's trained in his opening in certain ways that could be subject to -- it sounds good. let's face it. all of the president's nominees who have come before us, many of whom, the judicial nominees, many of whom have taken very strong positions on all kinds of issues, such as voting rights, woman's right to choose, all of that, they have

that was critical of the .nvestigation mr. barr is a lawyer who previously served as attorney general during the george h.w. bush administration. >>> thank you all. you're not going to get a good shot of me, so -- thank you all. so happy new year. new congress and we will see how this goes. recognize senator grassley. >> okay. i do this with a point of personal privilege, mr. chairman, and i appreciate that courtesy of you and the members. this is the first meeting of the senate judiciary committee in this 116th congress, it's also the first time that we convene while my friend, lindsey graham, holds the gavel and will proceed to be chairman, so i'd like to congratulate the new chairman, thank him for his leadership and say that i look forward to working with you and other members of this committee as we seek to address some of our nation's most pressing problems. i have every confidence that you will steer our 200-year-old committee in the right direction. >> well, thank you. i really appreciate that. in my view nobody looks over

but i just want to let you know, mr. barr, that we appreciate you stepping up at a time when the country needs somebody of your background and your temperament to be in charge of the rule of law. and with that, i will turn it over to my colleague, senator feinstein. >> thanks very much, mr. chairman. i want you to know i really look forward to working with you. >> me, too. >> and i think we can work productively together. senator grassley, i want to thank you for the time we worked together. it really was a pleasure and i had an opportunity to get to know you as the fine person that you are, so thank you very much. i want to say just one word or two or three about women. 25 years ago there were no women on this committee. i will never forget watching the anita hill hearing on a television in the london airport with a lot of people gathered around, so i want over to take a look and i saw, and i saw this all may judiciary committee. it took all these years, but here we are, and i want to particularly welcome senator ernst and s

plus, mr. barrending his decision to write a memo critiquing the mueller probe and even discussed his opinion of robert mueller. >> do you believe mr. mueller would be

in december president trump nominated mr. barr to replace jeff session who is held the position for over a year and a half since the beginning of the trump administration. william barr is now of counsel at the law firm of kirkland and ellis and served as the u.s. toge for president george h.w. bush. watch the confirmation process

in december, president trump nominated mr. barr to replace jeff sessions who held the position for over a year and a half since the beginning of the trump administration. william barr is of counsel and served as the u.s. attorney general for president george

concluded itself -- mr. barr is a qualified individual. pe words ofhear support. i will turn it over to you. thefirst witness will be former united states attorney, former u.s. district judge, former everything. [laughter] president, chief executive officer of the national association of advancement of colored people from baltimore, welcome. the former united states deputy attorney general, welcome. sorry,orable mark -- president, chief executive officer of the national urban league. former speech writer for aesident george h.w. bush and

mr. barr, congratulations on your nomination. thank you for being here. you were qualified for this position when you were confirmed 26 years ago and you are qualified today. i wanted toumenthal started as the reports about the fbi counterintelligence investigation launched against his president which i also find to be stomach turning. "the new york times" report indicates that the fib began the probe in part because they bring concerned about the president's foreign policy stances. comments he made during the 2016 campaign about foreign policy. and the republican party's official position on the ukraine. in your experience with the fbi, is it strange to have a counterintelligence investigation begun because members of that bureau disagree with the foreign policy stances of a candidate for president? >> yes. >> the supreme court has been unequivocal that the president in our system of government, the plen m plenra ry and exclusive power in the field of international relations. a power which does not require as its basis -- as a basis for its exercise an a

mr. barr to replace jeff sessions who held the position for a year and a half since the beginning of the trump administration. mr. barr is of counsel at his law firm and has served under president bush. watch the confirmation process ife on c-span3 on tuesday. >> congressman bennie thompson of mississippi has reclaimed the vel on the homeland security committee. he's our guest on "newsmakers" this week. mr. thompson: we have 800,000 federal employees who won't get a paycheck today. nonetheless they are working. many of them are keeping america safe but it's not right to have people working and not being paid. >> mr. chairman, i want to ask you, in the absence of any kind of breakthrough in negotiations, it's increasingly looking likely that president trump will declare a national emergency at the boarder to use funds from to the army corps of engineers to start building this wall without congress. in your view, does he have legal authority to do that? and if he gos ahead with it, what steps ca

and thank you very much, mr. barring here today for your past record of service, and i hope that i'm perhaps the last to make reference to your grandson by saying if he makes it through this hearing today, he can have any job he wants in this building. let me say first as former u.s. attorney i have admiration for your post and equally so for the bureau of investigation, and i know you respect christopher wray, the current director. but i think you would agree with me the fbi is probably one of the best, if not the most professional, accomplished, skilled and dedicated law enforcement agencies in the world. would you agree? >> yes, senator. >> and i hope that the president agrees with you and perhaps shares that view more publicly in the future. when the fbi begins a counterintelligence investigation, if it is of the president of the united states for working with a foreign adversary, that decision would be subject to multiple levels of review within the fbi, correct? >> i would assume depending on what the rules were

you're very welcomed to share your thoughts about mr. barrttee. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman, ranking member feinstein as well, members of the committee. it is my distinct pleasure to be here today to introduce william barr, the president's nominee to be attorney general of the united states. i have known and worked with bill closely over the years and i'm glad to call him a friend. he's had a distinguished career in public service and in the private sector. he started his career at the central intelligence agency. there, he went to the law school part time at george washington university. following graduation, a clerkship with a federal judge on the d.c. circuit before heading to private practice. later, he served in the reagan white house in the office of policy development. following another stint in private practice, bill began his distinguished career at the department of justice under president george h.w. bush. bill served as the assistance attorney general of the office of legal counsel. and finally as the attorney general of th

thank you, mr. barr. >> thank you, mr. chairman and congratulations. and to you, congratulations on your nomination and thank you for your lifetime of dedication of public service. >> thank you. >> in response to a question that senator ernst asked, you mentioned that we need barriers across the border to deal with drug trafficking. are you advocating a wall? >> well, i think i'm advocating a system, a barrier system in some places. and i'd have to find out more about the situation since i last visited the border. >> from what you know, do you believe a wall would address the concern you have about drug trafficking? >> a wall certainly would. in some places, it may not be necessary to have, you know, what most people imagine as a wall. >> are you aware that most of the drugs coming into the united states, in particular through mexico, are entering through ports of entry? >> yes, but they also come elsewhere and so do illegal bor. >> on the subject of drug trafficking, are you aware that most of the drugs that are trafficked into the united states enter

you're very welcomed to share your thoughts about mr. barree. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman, ranking member feinstein as well, and members of the committee. it is my distinct pleasure to be here today to introduce william barr, the president's nominee to be attorney general of the united states. i have known and worked with bill closely over the years. i'm glad to call him a friend. bill has had a distinguished career in publish service and in the private sector. he started his career at the central intelligence agency. while there he went to law school part time at george washington university. following graduation he was selected for a prestigious clerkship on the d.c. circuit before headed to private practice. later he served in the reagan white house in the office of policy development. following another stint in private practice, bill began his distinguished career at the department of justice under president george h.w. bush. bill served as the assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel. then as deputy attorney gene

i think the questions that we have of mr. barr is that will he protect the mueller investigation? let mr. mueller do the subpoenas that he sneeds? will he let him schmitt the full report? these are the questions i have to mr. barr as to whether he'll make that available. there's no question if you coach a witness to lie to congress, that's a criminal offense. >> but bill barr was asked those questions, he answered them? will you vote for him? what's the -- why do you still have reservations? >> on this issue i thought his response as to whether he'll make the full report available to congress, he talked about whether some of this will be redacted. we understand redacting for intelligence sources, but we want to make sure that we get the full report and the american people get the full report and that he won't interfere with the mueller investigation from the point of view if he needs subpoenas or needs resources, that mr. barr will fully support what mr. mueller is doing. >> it sounds like bill barr thinks that he can filter the report for congress and the american public. >> no, i

and if confirmed, mr. barrld need to recuse from oversight of the mueller probe. >> do you have any sense of why mr. rosenstein would know that the probe is going to be over by march? would he have been give an heads up by the mueller people? >> yeah, i -- look, that's possible. i'd say first, i think the only person who knows when the mueller probe is going to end is special counsel mueller and frankly, he may not even know because investigations develop in unextected ways. i'll give you an example which is until today my understanding is and still i believe as of today that interview transcripts from the house intelligence committee have not been provided to the mueller team. ed a schiff is going to provide them. it's going to take time for them to look through those transcripts and assess what follow up work needs to happen. i think rilgit's hard to predic when this thing will end. ty cob rr famously said it would end by the end of 2017. here we are in 2019 and it's not over yet. so i wouldn't make any bold

what seems unseemly to me because mr. barrng history in washington and among some folks, is well respected but the fact he in a sense sent this job application brief into the president, into the justice department in a sense saying hey, i'm with you in terms of his view that the mueller investigation should be suspect, doesn't have appropriate power, that the president above the law. in my mind, that in and of itself should have been disqualifying. he should withdraw his name and the fact that he has now made certain assurances to other republican senators, frankly, doesn't pass again the smell test with me. i think the country would be better served if the president had put forward someone as attorney general who would respect the mueller investigation, allow it to finish. this president says there is no collusion, there is no connection to russia, if that's the case, he should not be afraid of mueller finishing the job. >> as the top democrat on the intelligence committee, do you expect senate democrats will demand that as a

mr. barr, welcome. did you make it a condition of taking this job that rod rosenstein had to go? just to be clear so we're not bandying words here, did you request or signal or otherwise communicate in any way that you wanted rod rosenstein to go? >> no. the president said that the decision on the deputy was mine, anything i wanted to do on the deputy was mine. >> so we will find no william barr fingerprints on rosenstein's departure? >> no. rod and i have been talking, you know, about his plans. he told me that he viewed it as a two-year stint and would like to use, if i'm confirmed, my coming in as an occasion to leave, but we talked about the need for a transition, and i asked him if he would stay for a while, and he said he would, and so as of right now, i would say there is no -- he has no concrete plans, i have no concrete plans in terms of his departure. we're going to sort of play it by ear and see what makes sense. >> you have not undertaken to run him out in any way? >> absolutely no

i believe that's why mr. barr was selected and i believe even though mr. barr's got a great reputation from the past that he ought to recuse and his name ought to not go forward. >> reporter: thanks a lot. brooke, back to you. the top democrat on the intelligence committee believes this could be the most significant evidence yet about manafort and this could be a sign about potential collusion. the reassurances from the attorney general nominee not reashurg this senator. brooke? >> thank you. senator warren, thank you as well. we've got gloria and kim. plus, with no clear end in sight, the white house is growing increasingly concerned about how this government shutdown will effect the president's message at the state of the union. this is some republican lawmakers now expressing their frustration with the stalemate. >> we can all solve this and it's like an 80% agreement with when we're done, nobody wants to give anybody a win or anything else. we got to get past that or we'll continue in this stupid shutdown cycle for the rest of our time out here and that

and i think mr. barre sent these unsolicited memos that seemed to say hey look at me. i'm against the mueller investigation. i think the president has extensive executive powers. and i think with this kind of cloud over trump's view of mueller, we don't need an attorney general that is going to be at all compromised on this issue. >> compromising the investigation. so then on that, i'm just wondering what stands out to you the most in terms of donald trump's connections, compliance with russia. what one publicly known fact makes it seem most likely that president trump was working with russians to impact the outcome of the election, do you think? >> i'm not going to try to get into that speculation. i'll get into what we, from our senate investigation committee have discovered. we knew russians intervened. we knew they did it to help trump, to hurt clinton. we know that throughout the whole campaign donald trump said never a bad word against vladimir putin. we know that donald trump in a bizarre to say th

mr. barr, thank you for being here. william, your granddaddy is doing good. mr. barr, i want to go back. i think i'm the last person in the first round. we have to go back and maybe you have some restate some things you said earlier before i get to a few other things that i hope i have time to cover on. intellectual property, americans with disability act and a gao report from 2014. i do have to ask a question while senator kennedy is here because i don't think he covered the full landscape. he asked about anybody in government, anyone in the western hemisphere. did you talk to anybody in the eastern hemisphere with respect to the mueller probe? >> no, i didn't. >> ask him about the milky way. >> we got that closed out. would you go back again and please describe for me the -- first off, i think you made it clear despite the fact that some people thought you had coaching and some of the citations and the memo that you were wrote. this is the memo you wrote on your own. can you explain again the motivation behind the memo, what precisely you were trying to communic

mr. barrident trump has sought no assurances, promises, or commitments from me, expressed or implied, and i have not given himny other then i would run the department with professionalism and integrity. toita: let's crossiv washington and speak to our correspondent rajini vaidyanathan. off to aot getting good start with the president at loggerheads alrey. rajini: the key thing about this role of attorney general is it is an indendent role. overseeing the justice department and the main legal advisor to the u. government. it is a crucial role of any time in an administration, but more so because whoever is the next attorney general will oversee the ongoiig mueller inveion into whether or not the trump campaign colluded with the russians. there have been some concerns about william barr's independence because he authored a memo last year in which he criticized some aspect of the investigation. but he was resolute in the nfirmation hearing today he said he is an independent man and as youayhe sai

mr. barr was clear he would notify congress if he disagrees with mr.ueller, which i am grateful for, but his answers on providing a report to congress at the end of the special counsel's investigation were confusing. when i first asked him about the report, he said he would make it available. however, it seemed as the day progressed, he referenced writing his own report and treating the mother report -- mueller report as confidential. i will follow-up with him on writing -- in writing on this. i think it is essential congress and the american people what -- know what is in the mueller report. i met bob mueller when he was u.s. attorney and i was mayor in san francisco. i know his reputation and his integrity. this is a big report and the and witheds to see it exception, a very real national security concern -- with exception of real national security concerns, i don't believe there should be much redaction. i am hopeful that report will be made public and my vote depends because mr. chairman, an attorney general must understand the importance of this t

mr. barregarding the legality of interference and a personal matter of the president. here is some of that exchange from yesterday. [video clip] >> the other category of cases, and let's pick an easy bad example would be if a member of the president's family or business associate or something was under investigation and he tries to intervene. he is the chief law enforcement officer and you could say he would have the power, but that would be a breach of his obligation under the constitution to faithfully execute the laws. in my opinion, if a president attempts to intervene in a matter that he has a stake in to protect himself that should first be looked at as a breach of his constitutional duties, whether it also violates a statute depending on what statute comes into play and what the facts are. host: that was yesterday. you can find more at c-span.org. it is the larger question of william barr becomes the head of the justice department. we are asking about your level of confidence in the jus

and met with mr. barr.arlier there, senator joni ernst is a senator from iowa. >> things >> thanks. >> martha: you met with mr. barr. did you ask him if he would protect the mueller investigation? >> we spoke little about the mueller investigation because i long said that if there are leads that show russia collusion, those should be followed. but we did focus on where more of the aspects of is he going to uphold the constitution and the rule of law? will he work with me on important topics with me like immigration and violence against women. all of those he affirmed. >> martha: so -- you called in this memo that he sent in june of '18, the mueller probe legally disastrous. basically he believes that this part of the investigation is based on an insupportable reading of the law. but he also has said in comments since then that he would not do anything to get -- you just talked about it a little bit. what did he say? >> right. well, i believe, and what i believe he'll do is follow any leads that are valid. t