Russia investigation

"It was very clear to me that the attorney general is an appointee of President Trump," House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey said after Attorney General William Barr's testimony before a House panel.

Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers that evidence relating to whether the president obstructed justice "will be identifiable" when he releases a redacted version of the Mueller report next week.

Attorney General William Barr will appear before members of the House Appropriations Committee to discuss President Donald Trump's 2020 budget request for the Department of Justice.

We're talking about "conduct that is deeply unethical, unpatriotic and corrupt," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said.

"My focus here is on the other live grenade left over from Barr's letter: his contention that Mueller cleared Trump and his aides of any criminal liability for allegedly conspiring in Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election."

Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, attacked special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators who suggested Attorney General William Barr might be hiding the full findings of the special counsel's report.

"The two reports raise incredibly serious questions about the legitimacy of the process of handling this report. That's my view. It's a game-changer," Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek.

Attorney General William Barr is a "political hack" who is delaying the inevitable release of the Mueller report to help President Donald Trump, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said.

Some of the special counsel's investigators spoke out because they feared that Attorney General William Barr's version of the Mueller report's findings would harden public perception before the full report was released.

"I would think that he will probably be needed before more than one committee," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told MSNBC.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee say they want the special counsel's report released without redactions. But party leadership indicated redactions may be unavoidable.

Donald Trump Jr. praised a poll showing that most Americans believe the Russian probe was politically motivated but ignored the part saying a majority think the president's senior campaign advisers had improper dealings with Russia.

"When the full scope of the president's misconduct has been revealed, when his lies are debunked and his abuses have been laid bare, I believe that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will draft legislation to curb the worst of his offenses," wrote Congressman Jerry Nadler.

Post-Barr, only Mueller's full and un-redacted case file can be relied upon.

The House Judiciary Committee will vote to authorize subpoenas for the full Mueller report and documents from five former White House aides, including Steve Bannon and Hope Hicks.

Only 39 percent of Americans have deeply engaged with Attorney General William Barr's summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report, according to a recent poll.

"If you know President Trump...there is no way he sat down with the Russians and came up with a plan and followed it," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said.

"The Trump investigation did not start with the FISA warrant and Carter Page and even the dossier," Wallace said.

The attorney general said that Mueller's report is nearly 400 pages long, leaving Democrats to question the accuracy of his four-page principal conclusions and how he could have reached them in less than 48 hours.

In his first comment since Attorney General William Barr released his summary of Mueller's report on Sunday, Jared Kushner defended his previous statements and urged Congress to "move on."

Congress continues to scrutinize Russian efforts to influence the U.S., even after the Mueller report was submitted.

Those defending President Donald Trump and attacking John Brennan are playing politics with the Mueller report, says a spokesman for the former CIA director.

"He...has a brilliant mind. We should be celebrating him," wrote one Twitter user.

"This whole thing is a manufactured coup because they could not accept the results of the 2016 election, and they're continuing it," Limbaugh said.

Although special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has ended, President Donald Trump and his 2016 campaign remain at the center of five other probes from House Democrats, and one from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator Lindsey Graham said, "This whole Oliver Stone approach to the Mueller report by Democrats is getting a bid old."

For much of the past two years, a constellation of Republicans worked to get rid of Trump. Their mission now is infinitely harder, if not impossible.

"We would like to read the report in full," a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.

Putting politics ahead of national security is a what brought us here in the first place.

"A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report," Senator Rand Paul wrote in a Twitter post on Wednesday night.