Blumenthal Won’t Support AG Nominee Barr
by Peter Urban | Feb 4, 2019 7:33pm
() Comments | Log in to Facebook to Post a Comment | Share
Posted to: Congress, DC News Junkie, Law Enforcement, White House
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal emerged Monday afternoon from a private meeting with William Barr saying he will vote against confirming Barr as the next attorney general.
The announcement from the Connecticut Democrat was expected given his concerns over how the Trump nominee would handle Robert Mueller’s ongoing special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote this week on the nomination with a full Senate vote to follow. While Barr has indicated he would allow Mueller to complete his investigation, Blumenthal said Barr would not commit to a public release of the special counsel’s final report.
Without such a commitment, Blumenthal said that Barr had demonstrated that he would put President Trump’s interests ahead of the public interest — a disqualifying position for the senator.
“The Attorney General of the United States must be the people’s lawyer, not the president’s. He must serve the public’s interest and not do the bidding of the president,” he said.
Blumenthal said the “findings, evidence and facts” must be made public, suggesting that otherwise there would be “in effect, a cover-up.”
“He (Barr) has chosen not to make a commitment that I think is paramount in importance,” Blumenthal said. “The public has a right to know. They need it and deserve it.”
Barr previously appeared at a confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee where Blumenthal questioned him about indicting a sitting president. Barr suggested he would not change a 40-year precedent at the Department of Justice that presidents cannot be indicted while in office.
Post a comment
You must have a facebook account and be logged in to facebook (log in above) to comment.
Before commenting, please read our Comment Policy.
Rules of Conduct for Commenting
We moderate all comments before they are posted on the site and, where possible, on our social network pages. This takes time and therefore you may have to wait. Thank you for your patience.
-Commenters are welcome to express opinions in a civil manner.
-Be nice. Avoid personal attacks or name calling of any kind. Don't comment here to antagonize other people.
-Comments should be directly related to the topic of the story. If you must criticize, your comments should be cogent to the topic of the story and should add something new to the discussion. If it's obvious that you're simply engaging in a pattern of mean-spirited attacks from one story to the next, we will stop approving your comments. If we suspect that you are a paid commenter attempting to further a political agenda, your comments will be deleted.
-We will not publish allegations of criminal, unethical, or other extreme personal wrongdoing based on facts that haven’t been published in articles.
-Keep it clean. Avoid profane, obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist, or sexually-oriented language or your comments will be deleted. Discriminatory comments of any kind will be deleted.
-Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
-Do not attempt to hijack a comment thread to link with ads for your personal business or invective aimed at a person or a group against whom you have a personal vendetta. We will delete them.
-Do not copy the contents of someone else's work and attempt to publish it here - that is plagiarism. Write your own sentence summing up the other author's point and link back to their original work.
-Be proactive. If we mistakenly approve a comment that is offensive, let us know and include a link to the comment in question.
It takes considerable time to read and approve your comments, and that takes us away from the job of covering the news. If you are spending a lot of time commenting here or simply reading the site on a regular basis, consider supporting our work. As always, thank you for visiting with us!
Comments