Attorney general causes stir with ‘spying’ comments

By

National News

April 11, 2019 - 10:37 AM

U.S. Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Wednesday in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images/TNS)

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr sought to “please add one point of clarification” at the end of his testimony Wednesday before a Senate appropriations subcommittee — and the veteran law enforcement official needed it.

Cable news and social media were abuzz with one of Barr’s earlier word choices, when he told senators that he would look into the work of U.S. intelligence agencies directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election because “spying did occur.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, pointedly had given Barr an opportunity to rephrase that, “because when the attorney general of the United States uses the word ‘spying’ it’s rather provocative and in my view unnecessarily inflammatory.”

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