Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying the president broke no laws in call with Ukrainian leader
Attorney General William P. Barr ultimately declined to do so, leaving President Trump feeling frustrated, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump’s irritation comes as Barr and the Justice Department have sought some distance from the White House, particularly on matters relating to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
President Trump with Attorney General William Barr at the White House in July
From the moment the administration released the rough transcript, Barr made clear that whatever the president was up to, he was not a party to it.
Though the rough transcript shows Trump offering Zelensky the services of his attorney general to aid investigations of Biden and his son, a Barr spokeswoman said that Barr and Trump had never discussed that.
“The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former vice president Biden or his son,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement released at the same time as the rough transcript. “The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter. The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject.”
The department — and Barr in particular — has similarly sought separation from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was leading the effort to investigate the Bidens.
In addition to asserting that Barr and Trump had never discussed investigating the Bidens, Kupec said in her statement that the attorney general had not “discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.” Barr’s allies had previously confided to reporters that the attorney general was unhappy with Giuliani, particularly over his going outside of normal channels to pursue investigations of interest to the president.
Last month, after the department arrested two Giuliani associates who had worked on investigating the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine, the New York Times reported that Giuliani had participated in a meeting about a separate case with Brian A. Benczkowski, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and lawyers in the department’s fraud section.
The day after that report, the department issued an unusual statement saying those in the meeting were unaware of the case that led to charges against Giuliani’s associates for alleged campaign finance violations. Giuliani also is being investigated as a part of the case, though he has said he has not been told of that.
“When Mr. Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers met with Mr. Giuliani, they were not aware of any investigation of Mr. Giuliani’s associates in the Southern District of New York and would not have met with him had they known,” Peter Carr, a department spokesman, told the Times.
People close to Barr assert that while Barr is a strong believer in the power of the presidency, he has always recognized there might be times when he has to preserve the Justice Department’s independence.
Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, announced the hires on Twitter on Wednesday of his new criminal defense attorneys, indicating that he will be represented by New York lawyers Robert Costello, Eric Creizman and Melissa Madrigal.
The hires marked a shift for the former New York mayor, who had until recently insisted he did not need a defense lawyer, even as scrutiny of his interactions with the men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, has mounted.
Transcripts from closed-door depositions with diplomats conducted as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry and released publicly this week show that Giuliani’s name has been mentioned hundreds of times in the sessions.
The diplomats have testified that they came to understand over the summer that Giuliani was telling Ukrainian officials that they needed to release a public statement promising to investigate the unsubstantiated theory that their country interfered in the 2016 election, as well as a company whose board included Biden’s son. The diplomats have described Giuliani’s efforts as a shadow diplomacy conducted outside the normal channels of U.S. policy making.
In addition to working with Ukranian mafia members Parnas and Fruman on his Ukraine research, Giuliani was working for Parnas and was paid $500,000 for the advice he provided to the company, the Florida-based Fraud Guarantee owned by Parnas. |
