Sen Whitehouse Grills Bill Barr On Mueller Letter & Spying 5/1/19

Sen Whitehouse GRILLS Bill Barr On Mueller Letter & Spying 5/1/19

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse,said AG Bill Barr was practicing "masterful hairsplitting" when he answered questions about special counsel Robert Mueller's letter during senate judiciary committee hearing.
Whitehouse: "You knew that the Mueller letter was going to become public and that was probably yesterday? Barr: "I think so." Whitehouse: "OK. When did you decide to make that letter available to us in Congress?" Barr: "This morning." Whitehouse: "Would you concede you had an opportunity to make this letter public on April 4, when representative [Charlie] Crist asked you a very related question?" Barr: "I don't know what you mean by related question. To me it seemed to be a very different question." Whitehouse: "I can't even follow that down the road. That's masterful hairsplitting."
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) raked William Barr across the coals on Wednesday when he grilled the attorney general about his “spying” characterization of investigations into President Donald Trump‘s campaign.
The last time Barr testified before Congress, he drew a lot of attention for using the word “spying” with reference to the counterintelligence probe that was conducted on Trump’s 2016 campaign. Critics have been slamming Barr about this for weeks, saying he advanced the connotation that intelligence agencies engaged in rule-breaking conduct during their surveillance operations.
As Whitehouse grilled Barr over his handling of Robert Mueller‘s report, he switched gears and asked “have you ever referred to authorized department investigative activities – officially or publicly – as spying?”
Barr answered that he wouldn’t renounce “spying” as a term, and that whether the probe was properly authorized or not, he didn’t place any negative implicit meaning into the word.
“‘Spying’ is a good English word that doesn’t have synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating all forms of covert intelligence collection. I’m not going to back off the word ‘spying’ except, I will say, I’m not suggesting any pejorative and I use it frequently.”

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