Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to Congress and privately said she couldn't sleep the night after his testimony

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Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to Congress and privately said she couldn't sleep the night after his testimony

Nancy Pelosi Chuck Schumer

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  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to Congress concerning his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation on Thursday.
  • "He lied to Congress - if anybody else did that it would be considered a crime. Nobody is above the law - not the president of the United States and not the attorney general," Pelosi told reporters at a press conference on Thursday morning.
  • Pelosi accused Barr of lying to Congress about his knowledge of Mueller's dissatisfaction with his handling of the report, according to a Thursday Politico report.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to Congress concerning his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation on Thursday.

"He lied to Congress - if anybody else did that it would be considered a crime. Nobody is above the law - not the president of the United States and not the attorney general," Pelosi told reporters at a press conference on Thursday morning.

Pelosi accused Barr of lying to Congress about his knowledge of Mueller's dissatisfaction with his handling of the report, according to a Thursday Politico report. Barr told Congress last month that he was unaware of any concerns the special counsel had with Barr's controversial four-page summary of the 448-page Russia report.

But, as recent reporting revealed, Mueller sent an unusual letter to Barr in late March in which he argued that Barr's summary "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of the special counsel investigation.

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"There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation," Mueller wrote in the letter. "This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."

Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, but refused to appear for his second day of questioning on Thursday.

Read more: Elizabeth Warren calls on Attorney General William Barr to resign over his 'efforts to suppress the Mueller report'

Pelosi also broadly accused the Republican Party, and her GOP colleagues in Congress, of being in bed with special interests and unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities as lawmakers. And she accused Barr of being loyal to Trump and those special interests over his office.

There is an ideological anti-governance, anti-science, anti-meeting the needs of the American people," she said. "This isn't about President Trump only, it's about a right-wing ideological [sic] - they're handmaidens to the special interests in our country."

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She went on, "We are in a very, very challenging place because we have a Republican party in the Congress who are complicit in the special interest agenda of the National Rifle Association, the fossil fuel industry - special interests writ large."

Pelosi also reportedly told her colleagues that she couldn't sleep on Wednesday night following Barr's congressional testimony, Politico reported.

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