In Barr’s prepared statements, which were provided to CNN by the Justice Department on Monday, the attorney general says he has acted independently of President Donald Trump in decisions he has made in several criminal cases he has handled.
“Since I made it clear that I was going to do everything possible to get to the bottom of the serious abuses involved in the false ‘Russiagate’ scandal, many of the Democrats on this Committee have tried to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the fact of the president who eliminates criminal cases according to his instructions. Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that seems to be his agenda today, “Barr says in his written comments.
Barr’s testimony Tuesday is the first before the House Judiciary Committee, where Democrats accused him of committing numerous abuses. It comes after he failed to appear at a panel hearing last year and a March date was postponed. Democrats plan to pressure Barr to intervene in the prosecution of two Trump allies, his decision last month to expel a prominent and powerful US attorney and the use of force by the Justice Department against protesters to Barr’s threats to state and local officials for his handling of coronavirus. A lawyer for the Democratic committee told reporters Monday that Democratic lawmakers will seek to paint Barr as the career staff he repeatedly nullifies to serve the president’s interests first.
Barr will also face questions about his role in the administration’s crackdown on protests across the country that followed the assassination of George Floyd in May, including the decision to forcibly disperse a peaceful demonstration in Lafayette Square in June and the dispatch of Federal officers to Portland, Oregon, where protesters have clashed with authorities every night in front of a federal building complex.
In his opening statement, Barr said the president “has not attempted to interfere” in the criminal decisions he has made, which would include lowering the sentence recommendation for Trump’s old friend Roger Stone and moving to dismiss the charges against the first Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn. .
“My decisions on criminal matters have been left to my independent judgment, based on law and fact, without any direction or interference from the White House or anyone outside the Department,” Barr will say.
Most of Barr’s statement, however, is devoted to issues of race and police, with a decidedly defensive tone of law enforcement.
Barr calls Floyd’s murder “horrible” and says it “understandably rocked the entire country and forced us to reflect on longstanding issues in our nation.” However, he continues to relate the ways in which the police in the United States have changed since “the Civil Rights movement finally succeeded in bringing down the Jim Crow building.”
He acknowledges that the black community feels that the police are treating them unfairly and dismisses the concern as “legitimate”, but rejects the idea of ”deep-seated racism” within police departments.
And he calls the far-left movement to dismiss the police “extremely irresponsible” and suggests that a “commitment” to a “basic and overriding obligation to treat each other as individuals” is a “worthy response to the death of George Floyd.”
Heading to Portland, where federal Justice Department and Homeland Security department law enforcement officers have defended a federal court from nightly attacks by protesters, Barr vividly describes the violent clashes and accuses local politicians and the media. falsify and “tacitly (tolerate)” the confrontation.
“To say what should be obvious, peaceful protesters don’t throw explosives in federal courts, knock down plywood with levers, or throw fecal matter at federal officials,” Barr is expected to say. “To tacitly condone destruction and anarchy is to abandon the basic principles of the rule of law that should unite us even at a politically divisive moment.”
This story has been updated with additional developments on Monday.
CNN’s Evan Pérez contributed to this report.
.
