Attorney General William Barr reflected on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report of the Russia investigation. During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Barr said he he wanted to protect the executive branch, but not necessarily President Donald Trump.
"I felt the rules were being changed to hurt Trump, and I thought it was damaging for the presidency over the long haul," Barr said. "At every grave juncture the presidency has done what it is supposed to do, which is to provide leadership and direction. If you destroy the presidency and make it an errand boy for Congress, we’re going to be a much weaker and more divided nation."
Democrats have accused Barr of protecting Trump when he refused to comply with a Congressional subpoena and release a full, unredacted version of the Mueller report. In reality, Barr has followed the rule of the law. By law, he's not allowed to release grand jury testimony, something Democrats seem to not understand.
"People have to find out what the government was doing during that period," Barr told Fox News host Bill Hemmer last week. "If we're worried about foreign influence, for the very same reason we should be worried about whether government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale. I'm not saying that happened but it's something we have to look at."
"I think there's a misconception out there that we know a lot about what happened,” he said. “The fact of the matter is Bob Mueller did not look at the government's activities. He was looking at whether or not the Trump campaign had conspired with the Russians. But he was not going back and looking at the counterintelligence program. And we have a number of investigations underway that touch upon it."
Last week, Barr appointed Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe. The goal of Durham's investigation is to determine whether or not the probe was “lawful and appropriate,"