Ocasio-Cortez joins calls for Barr to resign

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Thursday joined other Democrats in calling for Attorney General William Barr’s resignation.

The move from the freshman lawmaker came after Barr refused to comply with a subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

Barr needs to resign. https://t.co/XOV1or0HAQ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 2, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez shared a tweet from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) blasting Barr for refusing to comply with the House subpoena for the unredacted report from special counsel Robert Mueller.

{mosads}“That is unacceptable. I will urge the Chairman to proceed w/contempt citation. This is extremely dangerous behavior from Trump and Barr,” Jayapal wrote.

House Democrats placed an empty chair for Barr in the committee room on Capitol Hill on Thursday after he said he would not testify.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said in a statement that Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) placed “unprecedented and unnecessary” conditions on the hearing by arranging to have committee lawyers ask him questions. The Justice Department argued that only members of Congress should be asking questions.

Barr was slated to answer questions about the findings and his own summary of Mueller’s investigation after he spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, facing hours of blistering questions from Democrats. 

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) during Wednesday’s testimony accused Barr of lying to lawmakers, compared him to Trump’s closest allies and told the attorney general, “You should resign.” 

2020 Democratic presidential candidates former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have also called for Barr to step down.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said it “makes perfect sense” for Democrats to call for Barr’s ouster. 

“[Barr] is doing the job he was hired to do,” Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. “Calling for his resignation makes perfect sense because he’s not discharging the duties of the office, he’s not going to resign, and at this point, I think that we know what we need to know about him.”

“Bob Mueller has made that abundantly clear, that he has not presented accurately the context, the nature and the substance of the investigation,” she continued.

Barr is facing pushback over a letter, which was first reported by The Washington Post, that Mueller sent to the attorney general saying his four-page March 24 memo did not “capture the context, nature, and substance” of the special counsel’s findings on Russia’s election interference and the Trump campaign.  

“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations,” Mueller wrote in the letter.