Attorney General William Barr testifies before Congress

Attorney General William Barr testified this morning in front of a House appropriations subcommittee.

While the hearing was scheduled to be about the Justice Department's budget, Democrats asked questions on a number of topics, including special counsel Robbert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

Here are the key takeaways from the hearing:

Attorney General William Barr says China poses a "very serious threat" and is "probably our highest priority" when it comes to counter-espionage.

Rep. Steven Palazzo, a Republican from Mississippi, asked Barr to "elaborate on the growing threat" and "call out some of these overseas adversaries" the the US should be concerned with.

Here's how Barr responded:

Rep. Ed Case, a Democrat from Hawaii, just held up one of the most coveted documents of the Robert Mueller investigation as a prop to criticize what are sure to be the coming redactions.

It's the Aug. 2017 memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to Mueller, expanding Mueller's mandate. It's almost completely redeacted, except the part about potential collusion by Paul Manafort.

Barr replied, “I appreciate the importance of releasing as much of the information in the report as I can consistent with the law.”

About that document: In August 2017, Rosenstein sent special counsel Robert Mueller a memo. It expanded on Mueller’s public mandate and listed several points that Mueller was specifically authorized to investigate. But it was almost entirely redacted when it became public in the run-up to Paul Manafort’s trial. The one visible portion says Mueller should investigate whether Manafort “committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials.”

Here's a closer look:

Attorney General William Barr was asked about reports that members of the special counsel’s team were frustrated with Barr's limited summary of the Mueller report.

He answered, "I suspect that they probably wanted more put out. But, in my view I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of being under inclusive or over inclusive but also would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should wait everything coming out at once."

What we have reported: Several investigators on Robert Mueller's team have expressed frustration to people outside the special counsel about the way the investigation findings were summarized by Attorney General Bill Barr in his letter Congress, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

In particular, some investigators felt the letter did not adequately describe how the investigation of obstruction included derogatory information about President Trump's actions, according to one of the sources. Barr's letter obliquely referenced evidence on both sides of the issue, but did not explain it further.

Reporting from CNN's Jeremy Herb, Laura Jarrett and Evan Perez

Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Alabama, said questions at Attorney General William Barr's hearing "have gone toward a grassy knoll conspiracy theory," referencing the never-ending swirl of conspiracy theories around the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Aderholt criticized his fellow representatives for asking non-budget questions at a budget hearing.

"Justice has submitted almost $30 billion dollars of taxpayer dollars to use, and I want to remind my colleagues that that is what the purpose of the Attorney General being here today is, to talk about that $30 billion of taxpayer dollars that’s going to be used," Aderholt said.

He continued:

Attorney General William Barr just echoed one of President Trump’s recent talking points, highlighting what the two men view as Democratic hypocrisy when it comes to releasing the Mueller report.

That’s because some of the Democrats who want Mueller’s full report released actually spoke out against the full release of the Starr report in the late 1990s. Ken Starr’s investigation led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings.

“Many of the people right now who are calling for the release of this report were basically castigating Ken Starr and others for releasing the Starr report,” Barr said.

Trump tweeted a similar statement last week:

Rep. Matt Cartwright asked Attorney General William Barr about the Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration recently said should be struck down.

Barr said he wants to let the courts "do their job" when it comes to the lawsuit.

Here's how the exchange went down:

CARTWRIGHT: Let me be the one to inform you that should the law be struck down, millions of people who get their coverage through the ACA marketplace would lose their coverage, and tens of millions more would see their premiums skyrocket. In addition if you are successful, 12 million people nationally and 750,000 in my home state of Pennsylvania who have coverage under the Medicaid expansion would also likely lose that coverage. Am I correct in that, sir?

BARR: I do think it’s likely we’re going to prevail.

CARTWRIGHT: If you prevail — well, you’re devoting scarce resources of your department to that effort, are you not Attorney General?

BARR: We’re in litigation — we have to take a position — we take position in litigation...

CARTWRIGHT: The answer is yes. You are trying to get it invalidated and if you succeed, that many people will lose their coverage nationally from Medicaid, and 750,000 from Pennsylvania alone, right?

BARR: I’m just saying, if you think it’s such an outrageous position, you have nothing to worry about. Let the courts do their job.

While Attorney General William Barr answers questions on Capitol Hill about the special counsel report, Department of Justice attorneys are in court discussing the same topic.

DOJ attorney Courtney Enlow told a federal judge in Washington this morning that Barr is “well along” in the process of redacting the report for Congress.

Remember: Barr just said this to Congress, too, and added that the redacted report should be ready to release "within a week."

In court, the Justice Department wouldn’t say when the Mueller report will be released or if executive summaries provided by the Mueller team — as described in recent media reports— will be included in the report that Barr is currently redacting.

Why the DOJ is in court: The early lawsuit over the Mueller report’s release ultimately may prompt the court system to get involved in checking Barr’s redaction decisions, and perhaps fashion the release of a version of the report that’s redacted differently from what will be given to Congress this month. 

That’s what the transparency group that brought the suit is hoping, the group said in court Tuesday. 

The federal judge overseeing this request asked for a detailed update from DOJ on May 2 about the possible release of documents from the special counsel’s investigation to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

The judge, Reggie Walton, said he would not step in immediately to get more information to the document requestor, a transparency group called the Electronic Privacy Information Center, but rather would allow for the Mueller report to be released first to Congress before asking for more details about the report’s subsequent release under the FOIA law. 

Walton would “keep the parties on the fast track,” he said. “The public has the right to know what it can know.”

“This is an extremely important subject matter to the nation,” he added. It’s “important the government be as transparent as possible in what it produces.”

We're about an hour into Attorney General William Barr's testimony before the House appropriations subcommittee. If you're just tuning in, here's what you need to know.

Barr is there to talk about the Justice Department's budget, but Democratic aides say no topics are off limits, and a lot of the questions so far have focused on special counsel Robert Mueller's report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Here's what we've learned about it: