President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump participate in a Fourth of July picnic with military families at the White House | July 4, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)
Recently, on “CBS This Morning” Jim Crawford, chief legal correspondent for CBS News, sat with Attorney General William Barr for an exclusive hour-long interview in Anchorage, Alaska. Crawford discussed with AG Barr a number of issues from obstruction to Barr’s review of the Russia investigation.
Barr told Crawford he believes Robert Mueller could have reached a decision on whether President Trump committed obstruction of justice, regardless of long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.
Crawford: The president has tweeted and said publicly that some in the [FBI’s] upper echelon, [James] Comey, [Andrew] McCabe, etc., committed treason. I mean do you agree with that?
Barr: Well, I—as a lawyer I always interpret the word treason not colloquially but legally. And you know the very specific criteria for treason—so I don’t think it’s actually implicated in the situation that we have now. . . .
Crawford: But it seems like you have a concern that there may have been a bias by top officials in the FBI as they looked at whether to launch and conduct this investigation?
Barr: Well, it’s hard to read some of the texts . . . and not feel that there was gross bias at work and they’re appalling. And if the shoe were on the other—
Crawford: Appalling.
Barr: Those were appalling. And on their face they were very damning and I think if the shoe was on the other foot we could be hearing a lot about it. If those kinds of discussions were held, you know, when Obama first ran for office, people talking about Obama in those tones and suggesting that “Oh that he might be a Manchurian candidate for Islam or something like that.” You know some wild accusations like that and you had that kind of discussion back and forth, you don’t think we would be hearing a lot more about it?
The excerpt of the interview was published by the WSJ.
For more go here.
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