Furious Democrats demand Barr retract ‘spying’ claim

“AG Barr admitted he had no evidence to support his claim that spying on the Trump campaign ‘did occur.’ AG Barr must retract his statement immediately or produce specific evidence to back it up,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted.

Barr’s testimony surprised lawmakers with the claim as they questioned him during a Senate Appropriations hearing on fiscal 2020 spending.

“I thought it was a striking allegation to make because of the implication of the word spying,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a member of the Judiciary Committee that questioned Barr, told the Washington Examiner.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. said Barr had gone “off the rails,” in making the claim and accused him of serving Trump rather than acting independently as the nation’s top law enforcement officials.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who has long believed Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians, condemned Barr’s comment on Twitter. “Mr. Barr knows how counter-intel investigations work,” he said. “He knows there was ample evidence of Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign and that the FBI took lawful action to stop it. Giving a wink and a nod to this long-debunked ‘spying’ conspiracy theory is irresponsible.”

Coons and other Democrats said Barr’s claim raises questions, but does not necessarily mean the government was illegally spying on Trump’s campaign.

“If that is what he’s saying, then give us the facts,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a senior member of the panel and former chairman, said. “I’d like to see the details of what he’s talking about.”

Republicans told the Washington Examiner that Barr’s spying claim warrants a probe and they endorsed the attorney general’s decision, revealed to a House spending panel Monday, to investigate how the Justice Department decided to probe the Trump campaign.

“I like what he said yesterday in the hearing about how we need to investigate what we’ve done and investigate any areas that they think raise concern in terms of prosecutorial or investigative misconduct,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said. “I think that’s healthy.”

Tillis didn’t question Barr’s claim about spying, even though the many of the top eight Republicans and Democrats briefed months ago by intelligence officials denied hearing that anything inappropriate took place in investigating Trump.

Barr is compiling a report to Congress that will include much of the 300-plus pages of the conclusions reached by special counsel Robert Mueller after a two-year probe into alleged collusion between President Trump an Russians.

It’s not clear whether Barr concluded spying may have occurred based on evidence included in the Mueller report or from some other source.

Barr told lawmakers he’s not sure if anything inappropriate took place but is going to investigate.

Tillis said he must have some evidence, or he would not have raised the issue publicly.

“The fact of the matter is he has access to all of the report, he has access to all of the materials, so I take him at his word,” Tillis said of Barr’s claim. “I don’t believe the attorney general would say that unless he has seen information that led him to that conclusion. That’s not his style.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., defended Barr on Fox News’ “Special Report” Wednesday. “He’s an honorable man,” McConnell said. “He’s not over there trying to cover anything up.”

[Related: Nadler demands DOJ answer for Attorney General Barr’s ‘spying’ bombshell]

Coons said Barr should not have suggested wrongdoing by federal law enforcement engaged in a legitimate investigation.

While many Republicans have questioned the legitimacy of the probe into Trump-Russia collusion, Democrats have long believed that the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to win the White House and that the probe into his conduct was legitimate.

“I think his use of the specific word spying, as opposed to intelligence gathering by law enforcement, has connotations that I had hoped he would retract or amend,” Coons said.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he’s unsure about what Barr meant by “spying.”

“I don’t know whether he means it in generic or technical way,” Cornyn said. “Clearly there was mischief going on and rogue activity by the FBI on a counterintelligence investigation.”

Barr did not provide reasons for why he believes spying occurred. He told lawmakers he is investigating whether any rules were broken in a probe that will examine how the Justice Department decided to open the probe into the Trump campaign.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr told lawmakers.

Rep. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said Barr revised his claim when he asked a follow-up question. Barr, Schatz said, told him he will be relying on the findings of the Office of the Inspector General, which is an independent entity within the Justice Department.

“I think this will be run through the political ecosystem on the Right and it will be more fodder for people who want to claim total exoneration for the president,” Schatz, a Trump critic, said. “My sense was that the attorney general was walking a fine line, probably he needed to accommodate the president’s desire to develop a counternarrative but not wanting to overdo it, so he was careful to say, this is not an investigation, I haven’t impaneled anybody, I’m going to be relying on the OIG. So I thought he walked a fine line, and given the chance to revise his choice of words, he did.”

Barr, in fact, told the committee he plans to assign Justice Department investigators to look into the matter independently.

After Schatz called on Barr to “rephrase” his spying claim, warning that it would “cause everyone in the cable news ecosystem to freak out,” Barr responded, “I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is planning to conduct his own inquiry into how law enforcement investigated Trump and whether rules or laws were broken.

He defended Barr on Twitter and took a jab a Democrats.”So disappointing to hear the speaker of the House say she doesn’t trust the attorney general regarding the Mueller report,” Graham said. “The Oliver Stone wing of the Democratic party is growing.”