Pelosi: Barr is ‘off the rails’

LEESBURG, Va. — Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday said Attorney General William Barr has gone “off the rails” after he testified before a pair of House and Senate committees this week.

“Let me just say how very dismaying and disappointing that the chief law enforcement officer of our country is going off the rails yesterday and today,” Pelosi told reporters as she kicked off House Democrats’ annual “issues” retreat at a golf resort 35 miles northwest of Washington.

Barr “is the attorney general of the United States of America, not the attorney general of Donald Trump,” she added.

A day earlier, the attorney general testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee that he has opened an investigation into how the FBI initially decided to launch a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

On Wednesday, Barr went further, telling a Senate committee that he thought that the FBI was “spying” on the Trump campaign, comments that infuriated Democrats in the Capitol.

“I think spying did occur,” Barr told Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) during the hearing. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

Barr told House and Senate lawmakers that he expects the Justice Department to send them a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference within a week. Pelosi and other Democrats have called on Barr to release the full, unredacted report.

“We want to see the Mueller report. There was an assault on the integrity of our election in our country, the basis for our democracy. There is no doubt about that. … It took place by Russia,” said Pelosi, who by virtue of her position is one of the top eight intelligence officials on Capitol Hill.

“You would think that every resource in our country would say we want to make sure this never happens again instead of engaging in this silliness. But, no, it isn’t silly; it’s too serious to be silly — this obstruction of getting the truth to the American people,” she added.

Asked if she has confidence that Barr will fairly conduct his investigation into how the FBI carried out their Russia probe, Pelosi offered a terse, one-word answer: “No.”