FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General William Barr speaks at a news conference to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, in Washington, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General William Barr has recused himself from the Justice Department’s deliberations on whether to allow T-Mobile to proceed with its $26 billion acquisition of Sprint, according to a source familiar with the decision.

The department’s Antitrust Division, headed by Makan Delrahim, is reviewing the deal to determine if it will lead to higher prices for consumers or to slower innovation, as critics allege. The Federal Communications Commission also must approve the transaction for it to go forward.

The recusal was first reported by the New York Post.

In a filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in December, Barr acknowledged owning a T-Mobile bond valued at $15,001 to $50,000 and two other T-Mobile bonds and a Sprint bond valued at less than $1,001. Those are to be sold within 90 days of his confirmation, which occurred on Feb. 14.

Barr had also recused himself from considering AT&T;’s plan to buy Time Warner, which the government opposed, because of his involvement with those companies. That deal has closed.

T-Mobile announced on Monday that the companies were extending a deadline to complete their deal to July 29. The two are among just four national wireless carriers, trailing Verizon Communications and AT&T.;

Regulators are expected to make a decision on the deal in early June. They will be weighing a potential loss of competition, and subsequently higher prices for consumers, against the prospect of a more powerful No. 3 wireless carrier which can work to build a faster, better 5G next generation wireless network.</s>T-Mobile’s planned merger with Sprint has been in limbo over the last several weeks, with a report suggesting that DOJ officials are unlikely to approve the deal in its current form. Now, Sprint and T-Mobile have agreed to extend the deadline for their merger.

The two carriers announced today that they have extended the deadline for their deal until July 29th. This means that Sprint and T-Mobile now have until then to convince both the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice that a merger is good for consumers.

In an interview on CNBC (via Reuters), U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division chief Makan Delrahim said that he has not made a decision regarding the T-Mobile and Sprint merger and is awaiting more data from the two companies:

“I have not made up my mind,” he told CNBC. “The investigation continues. We’ve requested some data from the companies that will be forthcoming. We don’t have a set number of meetings or a time line.” “If the case is there for us to challenge a transaction or suggest changes, we will do that,” he said. The division is reviewing the argument that the deal would allow the combined company to produce a better, faster 5G, the next generation of wireless, he added.

John Legere has promised that “New T-Mobile” prices will be the same or better as current Sprint and T-Mobile prices. The two have also touted that a merger would create a more powerful 5G network for consumers.

The Wall Street Journal last month reported that antitrust officials are skeptical of the arguments presented by T-Mobile and Sprint. Legere, however, called the report “simply untrue.” It’s likely that the extension announced today will give the two carriers more time to address those concerns.

What do you think of T-Mobile’s proposed merger with Sprint? Let us know down in the comments.

Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:</s>WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General William Barr will no longer appear as planned before the Democratically controlled House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, after its Chairman Jerrold Nadler insisted on allowing committee staff members to participate in public questioning, a Justice Department spokeswoman said Wednesday.

"Chairman Nadler placed conditions on the House Judiciary Committee hearing that are unprecedented and unnecessary," Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.

She added that Barr "remains happy to engage directly with members on their questions" concerning Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch Editing by James Dalgleish)</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr will face pointed questions on Wednesday about his handling of the special counsel’s report on Russia’s role in the 2016 election when he testifies before Congress amid accusations he misrepresented the document’s findings.

Barr’s testimony will mark the first time a member of President Donald’s Trump administration will have to testify about the contents of Robert Mueller’s report into whether Moscow conspired with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election and whether the president tried to impede the investigation.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Mueller complained about a four-page summary written by the attorney general, saying in a letter it “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigation’s conclusions.

Barr said in his summary of the report released on March 24 that Mueller did not establish that members of Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election.

He said Mueller left unresolved in his report the question of whether Trump committed obstruction of justice by impeding the Russia investigation. Barr said he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, had determined there was insufficient evidence to establish the president committed obstruction of justice.

The 448-page, partially redacted report, released on April 18, described in extensive and sometimes unflattering detail how Trump tried to impede the probe, but it stopped short of concluding he had committed a crime.

Some Democrats say Barr acted improperly by ruling out obstruction of justice charges against the president and praising the White House in a news conference ahead of the report’s release.

Internally, Democrats are now debating whether the report serves as a suitable basis for impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, have questioned whether the FBI overstepped its authority by monitoring Trump aides it suspected of being Russian agents during the campaign. Barr has said he will look into the matter.

Barr is also due to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Democrats who control the committee and the Justice Department are in disagreement over the format of the hearing.

Democrats want Barr to face extended questioning from staff lawyers once the customary round of questioning by lawmakers is complete, and sit for a closed-door session to discuss redacted portions of Mueller’s report.

The Justice Department objected because witnesses traditionally do not face questions from committee staff.

Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler has also demanded that Barr provide an unredacted version of the report and underlying evidence by 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) on Wednesday. The Justice Department has not said whether it will comply with that request.</s>A host of 2020 Democratic candidates called for Attorney General William Barr’s resignation on Wednesday in response to his handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“AG Barr is a disgrace, and his alarming efforts to suppress the Mueller report show that he’s not a credible head of federal law enforcement,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted. “He should resign—and based on the actual facts in the Mueller report, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the President.”

Two of the candidates calling for Barr’s resignation also had the opportunity to question him as he testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Moments after she grilled the attorney general, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told reporters: “No prosecutor worth her salt would make a decision about whether the president of the United States was involved in obstruction of justice without viewing the evidence. This attorney general lacks all credibility.” She called for Barr’s resignation.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a fellow judiciary panelist and Democratic candidate, shared a similar sentiment, urged supporters on Twitter and via email to sign a petition calling for Barr’s ouster.

“We can’t trust him to tell the truth, and these embarrassing displays of propaganda have to stop,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said. And former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) tweeted: “Barr has failed in his responsibility to our country. He is not fit to serve as Attorney General and should resign.”

Prior to the hearing, Julián Castro had already called for Barr’s resignation and later added in a CNN interview: “The Attorney General takes an oath to defend the Constitution and at every juncture what’s clear is that this Attorney General instead, has tried to be Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. That’s not the role of the Attorney General.”

Similarly, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) also called for Barr’s resignation prior to Wednesday’s hearing.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the latest to enter the 2020 contest, was campaigning in Iowa during the hearing and a spokesperson said they did not have anything to add at the moment when asked if he agreed with his competitors’ call for Barr’s resignation.</s>AP source: Attorney General William Barr has told House Judiciary Committee members he will not testify Thursday

WASHINGTON (AP) — AP source: Attorney General William Barr has told House Judiciary Committee members he will not testify Thursday.</s>WASHINGTON -- Private tensions between Justice Department leaders and special counsel Robert Mueller's team broke into public view in extraordinary fashion Wednesday as Attorney General William Barr pushed back at complaints over his handling of the Trump-Russia investigation report and aimed his own criticism at the special counsel.Testifying for the first time since releasing Mueller's report, Barr said he was surprised Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether President Donald Trump had tried to obstruct justice, and that he felt compelled to step in with his own judgment that the president had committed no crime."I'm not really sure of his reasoning," Barr said of Mueller's obstruction analysis, which neither accused the president of a crime nor exonerated him. "I think that if he felt that he shouldn't go down the path of making a traditional prosecutive decision then he shouldn't have investigated. That was the time to pull up."The airing of disagreements over the handling of the report was notable given the highly secretive nature of the special counsel's investigation and the public appearance for at least most of the probe that the Justice Department and Mueller's team were unified in approach. But Barr sought to minimize the rift by suggesting the special counsel's concerns were largely about process, not substance.Barr's appearance Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee gave him his most extensive opportunity to explain the department's actions, including his press conference held before the Mueller report's release. It was also a forum for him to repair a reputation bruised by allegations that he's the Republican president's protector and by the emergence of a private letter from Mueller that criticized his handling of the report.Democrats seized on the daylight between the two men to attack Barr's credibility and accuse him of unduly spinning Mueller's report in the president's favor. They also pressed him on whether he had misled Congress last month when he professed ignorance about complaints from the special counsel's team. Barr suggested he had not lied because he was in touch with Mueller himself and not his team."Mr. Barr, I feel your answer was purposely misleading, and I believe others do too," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.While Democratic senators bluntly questioned Barr's actions, Republicans, in addition to defending Trump, focused on the president's 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton's email and campaign practices and what they feel is a lack of investigation of them.Barr has also been invited to appear Thursday before the Democratic-led House Judiciary panel, but the Justice Department said he would not testify if the committee insisted on having its lawyers question the attorney general.Neither side broke much ground Wednesday on the specifics of Mueller's investigation, though Barr did articulate a robust defense of Trump as he made clear his firm conviction that there was no prosecutable case against the president for obstruction of justice.He was asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's top Democrat, about an episode recounted in Mueller's report in which Trump pressed White House counsel Don McGahn to seek the removal of Mueller on conflict-of-interest grounds. Trump then asked McGahn to deny a press report that such a directive had been given.Barr responded, "There's something very different firing a special counsel outright, which suggests ending an investigation, and having a special counsel removed for conflict - which suggests you're going to have another special counsel."Barr entered the hearing on the defensive following reports hours earlier that Mueller had complained to him in a letter and over the phone about the way his findings were being portrayed.Two days after receiving Mueller's report, Barr released a four-page letter that summarized the main findings.Mueller's letter, dated March 27, conveys his unhappiness that Barr released what the attorney general saw as the bottom-line conclusions of the special counsel's investigation and not the introductions and executive summaries that Mueller's team had prepared and believed conveyed more nuance and context than Barr's own letter. Mueller said he had communicated the same concern two days earlier."There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation," Mueller wrote in his letter to Barr. "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 appeared unmoved by the criticism. He said repeatedly that Mueller had assured him that the information in Barr's letter of conclusions was not inaccurate but he simply wanted more information out. Barr said he didn't believe a piecemeal release of information was beneficial, and besides, it wasn't Mueller's call to make.Once Mueller submitted his report, his work was done and the document was "my baby," Barr insisted defiantly."It was my decision how and when to make it public. Not Bob Mueller's," he said.Barr also complained that Mueller did not, as requested, identify grand jury material in his report when he submitted it, slowing down the public release of the report as the Justice Department worked to black out sensitive information.Barr noted that Mueller concluded his investigation without any interference and that neither the attorney general nor any other Justice Department official overruled the special counsel on any action he wanted to take. Barr also defended his decision to step in and clear the president of obstruction of justice after Mueller presented evidence on both sides but didn't reach a conclusion.</s>For the first time since the release of a redacted version of the 448 page report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections, U.S. Attorney General William Barr goes before Congress to answer questions about his handling of the report, with Democrats certain to press Barr over fresh reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had expressed frustration about early summaries of his findings.

Here's how the day's proceedings have unfolded:

9:15 am - President Trump has been up and tweeting since before 6 am today, and is now getting around to expressing his frustration with the Russia investigation.

9:10 am - What do Democratic Senators want to know from Barr? The news last night of a letter from Robert Mueller to Barr has certainly sparked a different line of questioning.

9:00 am - Democrats have been calling on Barr to resign. This is from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.</s>Attorney General William Barr will face lawmakers' questions for the first time since releasing special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report and amid new revelations Mueller expressed frustration to Barr about how the report's findings were being portrayed.

The Senate hearing promises to be a dramatic showdown as Barr defends his actions before Democrats who accuse him of spinning the investigation's findings in President Donald Trump's favor.

Barr's appearance Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to highlight the partisan schism around Mueller's report and the Justice Department's handling of it. It will give the attorney general his most extensive opportunity to explain the department's actions, including a press conference held before the report's release, and for him to repair a reputation bruised by allegations that he's the Republican president's protector.

A major focus of the hearing is likely to be the Tuesday night revelation that Mueller told Barr, in a letter to the Justice Department and in a phone call, that he was frustrated with how the conclusions of his investigation were being portrayed.

Barr also is invited to appear Thursday before the Democratic-led House Judiciary panel, but the Justice Department said he would not testify if the committee insisted on having its lawyers question the attorney general.

Barr's appearance Wednesday will be before a Republican-led committee chaired by a close ally of the president, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is expected to focus on concerns that the early days of the FBI's Russia investigation were tainted by law enforcement bias against Trump.

Democrats are likely to press Barr on statements and actions in the last six weeks that have unnerved them. The tense relations are notable given how Barr breezed through his confirmation process , picking up support from a few Democrats and offering reassuring words about the Justice Department's independence and the importance of protecting the special counsel's investigation.

The first hint of discontent surfaced last month when Barr issued a four-page statement that summarized what he said were the main conclusions of the Mueller report. In the letter, Barr revealed that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had cleared Trump of obstruction of justice after Mueller and his team found evidence on both sides of the question but didn't reach a conclusion.

Barr is likely to defend himself by noting how he released the report on his own even though he didn't have to under the special counsel regulations, and that doing so fulfilled a pledge he made at to be as transparent as the law allowed. Barr may say that he wanted to move quickly to give the public a summary of Mueller's main findings as the Justice Department spent weeks redacting more sensitive information from the report.

After the letter's release, Barr raised eyebrows anew when he told a congressional committee that he believed the Trump campaign had been spied on, a common talking point of the president and his supporters. A person familiar with Barr's thinking has said Barr, a former CIA employee, did not mean spying in a necessarily inappropriate way and was simply referring to intelligence collection activities.

He also equivocated on a question of whether Mueller's investigation was a witch hunt, saying someone who feels wrongly accused would reasonably view an investigation that way. That was a stark turnabout from his confirmation hearing, when he said he didn't believe Mueller would ever be on a witch hunt.

Then came Barr's April 18 press conference to announce the release of the Mueller report later that morning.

He repeated about a half dozen times that Mueller's investigation had found no evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia, though the special counsel took pains to note in his report that "collusion" was not a legal term and also pointed out the multiple contacts between the campaign and Russia.

In remarks that resembled some of Trump's own claims, he praised the White House for giving Mueller's team "unfettered access" to documents and witnesses. He suggested the president had the right to be upset by the investigation, given his "sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks."

It remained unclear Tuesday whether Barr would appear before the House committee. That panel's Democratic chairman, Rep, Jerrold Nadler of New York, said witnesses could too easily filibuster when questioned by lawmakers restricted by five-minute time limits. Having lawyers do the questioning enables the committee "to dig down on an issue and pursue an issue."

"And it's not up to anybody from the executive branch to tell the legislative branch how to conduct our business," Nadler said.

The committee will vote on allowing staff to question Barr at a separate meeting Wednesday, at the same time Barr takes questions from the Senate.

The top Republican on the House Judiciary panel, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, sharply criticized the plan. Nadler "has taken a voluntary hearing and turned it into a sideshow," Collins said.

The Justice Department's stance appears consistent with the Trump administration's broader strategy of "undermining Congress as an institution," said Elliot Williams, who previously served as deputy assistant attorney general in the department's legislative affairs office in the Obama administration.

He said that if he were still advising an attorney general, he would resist the idea of staff questioning a Cabinet official. "It's a rational response to not want them questioning the attorney general," Williams said.

That said, Williams added, "It's an incredibly common practice in the House of Representatives and was a practice long before President trump or William Barr took their offices and will be a practice long after they're gone."</s>In a withering rebuke of Attorney General William Barr, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday demanded that the country’s top law enforcement official resign from his post amid what she decried as mounting evidence that he had participated in cover-up efforts on behalf of President Donald Trump.

The senator began her remarks, which came during Barr’s much-anticipated testimony on the Mueller report before the Senate Judiciary Committee, by disparagingly comparing Barr to Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway—two figures, Hirono said, who have sacrificed their reputations in their work for “the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office.”

Hirono also directly accused Barr of lying to Congress, because he had told lawmakers that he was unaware of any potential concerns the special counsel had about his handling of the Mueller report. “Being attorney general of the United States is a sacred trust,” she continued. “You have betrayed that trust. America deserves better. You should resign.”

With her opening remarks completed, Hirono moved onto a fierce line of questioning about whether Barr believed it was appropriate for a president to ask his White House counsel to lie, questions that at times appeared to leave Barr visibly stumbling for answers.

Hirono was condemned by chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who asserted that Hirono had not only excessively criticized the attorney general but “slandered this man from top to bottom.” Graham then turned to the next senator.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has decided to recuse himself from deliberations about whether the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Justice Department ought to challenge the planned merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, says a Reuters source "familiar with the decision". Barr is invested in both of the firms involved.