Statement from Speaker Pelosi & Leader Schumer

Washington, D.C. – Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer released the following joint statement.

“What we’ve learned today is that Attorney General Barr deliberately distorted significant portions of Special Counsel Mueller’s report.

“Special Counsel Mueller’s report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him. But if you hadn’t read the report and listened only to Mr. Barr, you wouldn’t have known any of that because Mr. Barr has been so misleading.

“There are at least four significant ways that Mr. Barr has misled the public on the contents of the Mueller report:

1. Attorney General Barr led us to believe that the Office of Legal Counsel opinion did not play a significant role in Special Counsel Mueller’s refusal to make a decision on obstruction. In fact, the report shows the opinion played a major role, and probably the decisive, role in Special Counsel Mueller’s decision not to reach a conclusion.
2. Attorney General Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice but Special Counsel Mueller’s report cites several instances of presidential action that appear to undercut that finding.
3. Third, the special counsel’s own words directly and dramatically undercut Attorney General Barr’s claim that the president fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation.  As the report shows, the president, in fact, did the opposite – from firing the FBI Director, to pressuring senior officials to lie, to refusing to testify, to attempting to fire the special counsel himself.
4. Lastly, the special counsel’s report confirms that members of the Trump campaign were aware of Russian attempts to interfere with the election, but instead of reporting this to the federal authorities, like any patriotic American would have done, the Trump campaign and President Trump himself openly encouraged it for the purposes of winning a presidential election. That Attorney General Barr omitted this from all of his public statements regarding the report should shake any patriotic American to the core.

“For these reasons, it is imperative that the rest of the report and the underlying documents be made available to Congress and that Special Counsel Mueller testifies before both chambers as soon as possible.”