US Attorney-General William Barr has been accused of trying to protect President Donald Trump and “bake in the narrative to the benefit of the White House” by holding a news conference about the highly anticipated special counsel’s Russia probe report hours before the report’s due release on Thursday, US time.
In a hastily assembled news conference of his own on the eve of the release of the redacted findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a democrat, said he’d been informed by the Justice Department that Congress would receive the report between 11am and noon. Barr was scheduled to speak to the press at 9.30am.
“The Attorney-General appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump – the very subject of investigation at the heart of the Mueller report – rather than letting the facts speak for themselves,” Nadler said.