Kansas City, Mo. (May 1, 2019) – On April 9, Attorney General Barr testified that he did not know why there were reports surfacing that the Office of the Special Counsel was unhappy with his summary of the conclusions regarding obstruction. He further testified that he did not know whether Mueller supported his conclusion.

However, according to a letter delivered to Barr just days before his testimony, Mueller communicated to the Attorney General that his summary did not “fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.” Mueller further stated that, “public confusion about critical aspects of the investigation” now “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.”

Missouri Democratic Party Executive Director Lauren Gepford released the following statement following Barr’s testimony before the Senate today:

“Given the concern expressed by the Office of the Special Counsel, and by his colleagues in the United States Senate, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley owed it to his constituents to cut through the Attorney General’s spin. Instead, Senator Hawley today used his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to carry the administration’s water. As a former state Attorney General, Hawley should know that an Attorney General doesn’t work for the chief executive, they work for the people. Frankly, Hawley’s embarrassing and relentless defenses of Trump in the face of troubling evidence demonstrates why he quickly became uninterested in being Missouri’s attorney general. Robert Mueller should testify before Congress because we can’t trust our elected Senator to get to the bottom of this.”