'He is not the Attorney General in the way that he has conducted himself': Hillary Clinton blasts Bill Barr as Trump's 'defense lawyer' and echoes Democrat calls for him to resign

Hillary Clinton believes Attorney General William Barr should resign for acting like President Trump's 'defense lawyer' in his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

'Calling for [Barr's] resignation makes perfect sense, because he's not discharging the duties of the office; he's not going to resign, and at this point, I think that we know what we need to know about him,' Clinton said during an appearance on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show.

When asked about Barr's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Clinton said: 'It was another day today where you just can't even believe what you're hearing.'

The former secretary of state, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential elections, says that Congress should call other witnesses mentioned in Mueller's report.

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Hillary Clinton: "Calling for" AG Barr's "resignation makes perfect sense, because he's not discharging the duties of the office; he's not going to resign, and at this point, I think that we know what we need to know about him." pic.twitter.com/iCrFdzi0L0

7:05 AM - May 2, 2019

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Hillary Clinton (above) on Wednesday called for Attorney General William Barr to resign over his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections

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Barr appeared on Wednesday to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee

She also called on the House Judiciary Committee to hold Barr in contempt.

The Trump administration has vowed to block any current and former aides from testifying before Congress on the Mueller report.

'They will block everything,' Clinton said. 

'This also comes alongside them refusing the subpoena for the unredacted Mueller report and suing his own accounting firm and bank so they don't respond to congressional subpoenas.'

The Trump organization this week sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One in an attempt to block them from submitting financial and banking records to Congress. 

'They're trying to block the White House counsel [Don McGahn] from responding to a subpoena,' Clinton said. 

'We're seeing a wall come up in terms of what they're saying they're going to allow. 

'If they try to wholesale block every witness who spoke to Mueller from speaking to these committees, how does that resolve? 

'How does that end? Does it become an endless legal fight?'

McGahn, the former White House counsel, threatened to quit when Trump ordered him to fire Mueller, according to the Mueller report.

Democrats say Trump's attempt to fire Mueller constitutes obstruction of justice.

Clinton said that Barr showed on Wednesday that he is 'not the attorney general of the United States in the way that he has conducted himself.'

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Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the FBI had an anti-Trump bias which he claims contributed to the closing of the Hillary Clinton email investigation

Graham shocks Senate committee by quoting vulgar text

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'He auditioned for the job with his 19-page memo basically saying there is no such thing as obstruction of justice when it comes to a president,' Clinton said. 

'He was hired to make sure that was a reality. He has behaved in that way.'

Clinton was referring to Barr's memo, which he wrote months before he was confirmed as attorney general earlier this year.

In the memo, Barr criticized the Mueller investigation and said that the president could not commit obstruction of justice. 

Clinton's name was mentioned during Barr's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, mentioned the FBI's investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server to send classified information when she was secretary of state.

Graham suggested that the FBI's anti-Trump bias and pro-Clinton sentiment led to the decision not to prosecute Clinton over the email matter.

The senator also alluded to alleged anti-Trump bias among FBI agents, namely Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Mueller investigation after text messages sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he was having an affair, showed he had a preference for Clinton.

Clinton blasted Graham on Wednesday for re-litigating the email matter, saying: 'That's an absolute disgrace. They know better. 

'But this is part of their whole technique to divert attention from what the real story is. 

'The real story is the Russians interfered in our election. And Trump committed obstruction of justice. 

'That's the real story.'

Clinton was also asked about a New York Times report from last week which claimed that Trump on numerous occasions sought to have the Justice Department re-open an investigation against her.

According to the Mueller report, Trump pushed then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to re-launch a criminal probe against Clinton.

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Clinton said reports that President Trump ordered his then-attorney general, Jeff Sessions (seen right with Trump in December 2017), to re-launch a criminal investigation against her is a 'sign [that she is] living rent free inside of the president's head'

When asked about the claim, Clinton said it was 'a sign of a guilty conscience or a real fear that you could possibly have.'

'I'm living rent free inside of Donald Trump's brain,' she said. 'It's not a very nice place to be, I can tell you that. 

'I've been investigated repeatedly by the other side. 

'And much to their dismay, but to my satisfaction, it's been for naught.' 

Clinton was also asked about Barr's contention that the president was within his rights to fire Mueller if he so wanted because he believed he was innocent.

'If the president is being falsely accused, which the evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false, and he knew they were false, and he felt that this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for replacing an independent counsel,' Barr said.

Clinton responded to that statement, saying: 'That is the road to tyranny. 

'That is what authoritarians believe and those who service them argue. 

'And as a young lawyer on the Watergate investigation back in 1974, that would have been unthinkable for either a Democrat or a Republican to argue that.' 

Barr on Wednesday canceled plans to testify before the House of Representatives about his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, further inflaming tensions between Trump and Democrats in Congress. 

Barr was due to face the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but pulled out after the two sides were unable to agree on the format for the hearing.

Power struggle: Barr (left) is refusing to turn up to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Democratic congressman Jerrold Nadler (right)

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Senators Corey Booker (left) and Kamala Harris (right), Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who are running for president, both questioned Barr and then called for him to resign

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Go now: Mazie Hirono, the Hawaii Democratic senator, told Barr that he had lied to the American people about the contents of the Mueller report and said: 'You should resign.'

'It’s simply part of the administration’s complete stonewalling of Congress,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told reporters.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Nadler’s proposal to have committee lawyers question Barr was 'unprecedented and unnecessary,' saying questions should come from lawmakers.

The Justice Department also said on Wednesday it would not comply with a Nadler-issued subpoena seeking an unredacted version of Mueller’s report and underlying investigative files from the probe.

Earlier on Wednesday, Barr spent more than four hours before the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee where he fended off Democratic criticism of his decision to clear Trump of criminal obstruction of justice and faulted Mueller for not reaching a conclusion of his own on the issue.

In his first congressional testimony since releasing a redacted version of Mueller’s report on April 18, Barr also dismissed Mueller’s complaints that he initially disclosed the special counsel’s conclusions on March 24 in an incomplete way that caused public confusion.

Illustrating tensions between the two men, Barr described as 'a bit snitty' a March 27 letter from Mueller in which the special counsel urged him to release broader summaries of his findings - a step Barr rejected. 

Trump seized on Barr’s March 24 letter to declare that he had been fully exonerated.

Several Democrats on the Senate committee called for Barr’s resignation.

Democrats have accused Barr of trying to protect the Republican president, who is seeking re-election next year. 

They pressed Barr on why he decided two days after receiving the 448-page document from Mueller in March to conclude that Trump had not unlawfully sought to obstruct the 22-month investigation.

'I don’t think the government had a prosecutable case,' Barr said.

The report detailed extensive contacts between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Moscow and the campaign’s expectation that it would benefit from Russia’s actions, which included hacking and propaganda to boost Trump and harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. 

The report also detailed a series of actions Trump took to try to impede the investigation.

Mueller, a former FBI director, concluded there was insufficient evidence to show a criminal conspiracy and opted not to make a conclusion on whether Trump committed obstruction of justice, but pointedly did not exonerate him. 

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In a letter Wednesday, the Justice Department informed Jerrold Nadler's House Judiciary Committee that it wouldn't be getting the full, unredacted Mueller report. AG Barr also won't testify before the committee on Thursday

Barr has said he and Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, then determined there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction.

Barr often appeared to excuse or rationalize Trump’s conduct, asserting that the president may not necessarily have been trying to derail Mueller’s investigation.

Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono told Barr that he had sacrificed a 'once-decent reputation for the grifter and liar that sits in the Oval Office.'

Senator Lindsey Graham, the committee’s Republican chairman, rushed to Barr’s defense, telling Hirono: 'You’ve slandered this man.'

Trump had been unfairly smeared, Barr said, by suspicions he had collaborated with Russia in the election. 

'Two years of his administration have been dominated by the allegations that have now been proven false. To listen to some of the rhetoric, you would think that the Mueller report had found the opposite,' Barr said.

Barr was critical of Mueller for not reaching a conclusion himself on whether Trump obstructed the probe.

'I think that if he felt that he shouldn’t go down the path of making a traditional prosecutorial decision, then he shouldn’t have investigated,' Barr said.

Barr was asked about the report’s finding that Trump directed then-White House counsel Don McGahn in June 2017 to tell Rosenstein that Mueller had conflicts of interest and must be removed. McGahn did not carry out the order. 

Rosenstein had appointed Mueller the prior month.

Barr, appointed by Trump after the president fired his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, seemed to minimize the incident and said Trump believed 'he never outright directed the firing of Mueller.' 

Trump could have presumably appointed someone else to do the job after Mueller was fired, he said.

'We did not think in this case that the government could show corrupt intent,' Barr said. 

Democrats on the panel were unconvinced.

'I think the president’s intention was very clear. He wanted this to end,' Senator Dick Durbin said.

Under questioning by Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, a 2020 presidential candidate, Barr acknowledged he did not review the investigation’s underlying evidence before deciding to clear Trump of obstruction.

Barr disputed the view that Mueller was handing the baton to Congress for possible impeachment proceedings. 

'That would be very inappropriate,' Barr said. 'That’s not what the Justice Department does.'

The Democratic-controlled House would start any such impeachment effort, but Trump could not be removed from office without approval by a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Democrats also accused Barr of misleading Congress, by saying in April that he did not know whether Mueller agreed with his characterization of the report - failing to mention Mueller’s March 27 letter that Barr’s initial summary did not 'fully capture the context, nature and substance of this Office’s work.'

Barr testified that Mueller was unhappy with the way the conclusions were being characterized in the media, not his account of the conclusions, although Mueller’s letter did not mention media coverage.

'The letter is a bit snitty,' Barr said, using a word meaning disagreeably ill-tempered, 'and I think it was probably written by a member of his staff.'

Several Democrats demanded that Mueller testify before the committee, but Graham ruled that out.

Committee Republicans did not focus on Trump’s conduct but rather on what they saw as the FBI’s improper surveillance during the 2016 race of Trump aides they suspected of being Russian agents, as well as on the Kremlin’s election meddling.

Barr indicated that to him, the matter was closed.

'The report is now in the hands of the American people,' he said. 

'We’re out of it. We have to stop using the criminal justice system as a political weapon.'