NPR News

House Judiciary Panel Convenes, Then Adjourns — With No Attorney General

By Brian Naylor

Published May 2, 2019 at 4:09 PM EDT

The seat for Attorney General William Barr at the House Judiciary Committee room on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Barr has refused to testify before the committee hearing on his handling of the report from special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. [Jim Watson/AFP / Getty Images] — The seat for Attorney General William Barr at the House Judiciary Committee room on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Barr has refused to testify before the committee hearing on his handling of the report from special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET

The House Judiciary Committee attempted to hold a hearing Thursday on special counsel Robert Mueller's report, but its star witness, Attorney General William Barr, refused to show.

Instead, the committee met for 15 minutes of partisan accusations, countercharges and theatrics, before adjourning.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that Barr would not appear before the House panel on Thursday, citing conditions Democrats set, including an insistence that staff attorneys be allowed to question Barr along with committee members.

Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said the Trump administration "may not dictate the terms of a hearing in this hearing room."

The ranking Republican on the panel, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, called the hearing "a circus political stunt."

It wasn't clear whether he was referring to the empty chair at the witness table with Barr's place card before it, or the bucket of fried chicken and prop hen that Democratic members left where the attorney general was to sit.

Atmospherics aside, Democrats are clearly frustrated by what they see as the Trump administration's obstruction of Congress' oversight role. Nadler's demand for an unredacted version of the Mueller report on Russia's interference in the 2016 election has been ignored, and the president has vowed to fight all congressional investigations into his business and finances.

Nadler said he would give the Justice Department "a day or two" to turn over the unredacted Mueller report, and he threatened to hold Barr in contempt of Congress if he refused to comply.

"The challenge we face is that if we don't stand up to him together, today, then we risk forever losing the power to stand up to any president in the future," Nadler said.