Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo asked AG Barr about Adam Schiff’s claims that there was Russian collusion with President Trump’s campaign.
The anchor asked AG Barr about Schiff saying “collusion in plain sight” and asked whether there will be “accountability.”
“Well, as far as public comments like these people have been making in press conferences and on television and so forth, you know, the accountability is really elections for Schiff.”
“That’s why we have elections. If the people of his district want him to continue to behave as he has, then they can send him back to office,” Barr said.
“It is infuriating, and it’s the same phenomenon I discussed with the media, which is the media misled the American people grossly over a long period of time with exaggerated claims and misinformation, and they haven’t been held accountable — and the same for a lot of these talking heads.”
The Washington Examiner reported that Schiff has consistently insisted that collusion did occur, however, saying in 2018 that “there’s plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight” and in 2019 that “there is ample evidence of collusion in plain sight.”
Even after the release of the Russia witness transcripts, Schiff insisted that “there is ample evidence of the corrupt interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia, both direct and circumstantial.”
“It’s been stunning that all we have gotten from the mainstream media is sort of bovine silence in the face of the complete collapse of the so-called Russiagate scandal, which they did all they could to sensationalize and drive,” AG Barr said in part of the interview that aired Sunday. “And it’s, like, not even a ‘whoops.’“
“They’re just onto the next false scandal. So, that has been surprising to me that people aren’t concerned about civil liberties and the integrity of our governmental process.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Russia investigation, which was released in December, criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier.
The attorney general has criticized Mueller for seeming to ignore the possibility of Russian disinformation in Steele’s dossier.
AG Barr also said he expects “developments” in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators by the end of the summer.
