Following a subpoena threat from House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Attorney General William Barr agreed Wednesday to testify before the House next month as part of an investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump.
Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for Barr, confirmed in a tweet that the attorney general will appear before the House Judiciary Committee on July 28 to face questions on a range of issues, including his controversial dismissal of the criminal case against Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser.
Nadler, D-N.Y., made clear earlier this week that his committee's Democratic majority was preparing to subpoena Barr unless he agreed to testify.
A spokesman for Nadler told the New York Daily News that the threat appeared to have work, as Barr's office reached out Tuesday and said the attorney general was ready to commit to a date.
"They didn't want us to issue the subpoena," the spokesman said.
The attorney general has for various reasons refused to appear before the committee since May 2019.
Kupec's announcement came as the committee was in the middle of hearing scathing testimony from a number of former Justice Department officials in its ongoing probe.
"William Barr poses the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law and to public trust in it. That is because he does not believe in its core principle _ that no person is above the law," said Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general who served under Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Barr has drawn bipartisan outrage over allegations that he has been undermining his own career prosecutors, skirted the rule of law and violated Justice Department protocols by upending prosecutions of Trump's associates and friends.
In a nearly unprecedented move, Barr earlier this year ordered his department to dismiss Flynn's case, even though the former national security adviser twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's U.S. ambassador.
Barr also overruled his own prosecutors in the criminal case against Roger Stone, saying that their sentencing recommendation for the criminally convicted Trump pal was too harsh. The unusual maneuver prompted all four prosecutors on Stone's case to resign in protest.
Hours before Barr's testimony confirmation Wednesday, Flynn scored a major legal victory, as a federal appeals court said a U.S. District Court judge in Washington had to throw out the case, as requested by the Justice Department.
The judge, Emmet Sullivan, had refused to toss the case over concerns that Barr had violated standard legal procedures to help out one of the president's pals.
