US Attorney General Bill Bar testifies in Congress

Attorney General William Barr is appearing before House lawmakers in a long-awaited showdown between congressional Democrats and one of the President's most effective enforcers.

Tuesday's appearance on Capitol Hill is Barr's first before the House Judiciary Committee, where the panel's Democrats have accused Barr of a litany of offenses and raised the specter of impeachment. 

These are some key topics Democrats are expected to grill Barr on:

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Attorney General William Barr will testify soon before the House Judiciary Committee in a hearing titled "Oversight of the Department of Justice."

It will be the first time Barr appears before this Democratic-led panel. He is the hearing's only witness.

The committee's chair Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, and the Republican ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan are expected to deliver opening remarks. After Barr's opening statement, committee members will have one round of 5-minute questioning.

Nadler was involved in a car accident this morning on his way down to Washington for today’s hearing and the panel was delayed. It was originally set to begin at 10:00 a.m. ET. Nadler, who was not driving, was not hurt in the accident, a spokesperson said.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have long been angling for Barr to appear before them after a no-show last year and previous dates this year were scuttled by the coronavirus pandemic.

With reporting from CNN's Jeremy Herb and David Shortell

Pool

Attorney General Bill Barr just arrived at the US Capitol ahead of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

Barr was wearing a black face mask as he walked through the building.

The hearing is set to begin at 10:45 a.m. ET. The Democratic-led committee is expected to grill Barr on a number of episodes lawmakers say raise concerns about the agency's independence and point to an abuse of power.

Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

The House Judiciary Committee's hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr is now scheduled to begin at 10:45 a.m. ET, a spokesperson said.

The hearing had originally been slated to begin at 10 a.m. ET, but was pushed back after House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler was involved in a car accident this morning.

Nadler, who was not driving, was not hurt in the accident, a spokesperson said.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Tuesday's appearance on Capitol Hill will be Attorney General William Barr's first before the House Judiciary Committee.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have long been angling for Barr to appear before them after a no-show last year and previous dates this year were scuttled by the coronavirus pandemic.

And his appearance comes as controversial episodes at the Justice Department have mounted, including Barr's personal intrusion into the prosecutions of two allies of President Trump, and his move last month to oust a prominent and powerful US attorney.

Barr has never appeared before the House Judiciary Committee — either while attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration or since his February 2019 Senate confirmation.

He last appeared on Capitol Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2019, when he defended his decision-making in the rollout of the special counsel report, which Democrats charge skewed Robert Mueller's findings.

More than one year removed, the Mueller saga will be just one topic for Tuesday's hearing, as Democrats move to probe a host of new scandals in the attorney general's orbit.

Attorney General William Barr accuses congressional Democrats of seeking to discredit him because of his investigation into the origins of the FBI's Russia probe, in a combative opening statement for Tuesday's hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

In Barr's prepared remarks, which were provided to CNN by the Justice Department on Monday, the attorney general says he has acted independently of President Trump in the decisions he's made in several criminal cases he's handled.

Barr will also face questions on his role in the administration's crackdown on the protests across the country that followed George Floyd's killing in May, including the decision to forcibly disperse a peaceful demonstration at Lafayette Square in June and the dispatching of federal officers to Portland, Oregon, where rioters have clashed with authorities nightly outside a complex of federal buildings.

In his opening statement, Barr said the President "has not attempted to interfere" in the criminal decisions he's made, which would include lessening the sentencing recommendation for Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone and to move to dismiss charges against Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"My decisions on criminal matters have been left to my independent judgment, based on the law and fact, without any direction or interference from the White House or anyone outside the Department," Barr will say.

The majority of Barr's statement, however, is devoted to issues of race and policing, striking a tone that is decidedly defensive of law enforcement.

Barr calls the killing of Floyd "horrible" and says it "understandably jarred the whole country and forced us to reflect on longstanding issues in our nation." He continues, however, by recounting the ways that policing in America has changed since "the Civil Rights movement finally succeeded in tearing down the Jim Crow edifice."

Read Barr's full opening statement here:

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House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler was involved in a car accident this morning on his way down to Washington for today’s Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General William Barr, a Nadler spokesperson said. 

Nadler, who was not driving, was not hurt in the accident, the spokesperson said. But the accident, which did not involve another vehicle, has delayed Nadler’s arrival and the hearing this morning will be delayed as a result.

The hearing is now scheduled to begin at 10:45 a.m. ET, the spokesman said. It was originally scheduled to start at 10 a.m. ET.

Geoffrey Berman, the former US attorney in Manhattan who was fired last month following a tense standoff with Attorney General William Barr, told a congressional panel earlier this month that Barr had pressured him to resign and had warned he could be harming his future job prospects if he did not do so.

Berman said he objected to Barr's plans to appoint an acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York who was not in the office already.

He testified that Barr's initial announcement that New Jersey US Attorney Craig Carpenito would become acting US attorney in Manhattan would have been "unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained," according to his statement.

Berman appeared before the Judiciary Committee to discuss his dismissal as US attorney for the Southern District of New York, which has investigated a number of President Trump's associates.

The closed-door interview was part of Democrats' push to scrutinize Barr's actions and what they charge is unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department.

After Berman's firing, House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, suggested that his committee might attempt to impeach Barr, though he also called pursuing it a "waste of time" and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tamped down talk of impeachment.

"Barr's priorities are clear: Trump first, America second," Nadler said earlier this month. "There is one rule for the President and one rule for the rest of us. Barr is corrupting DOJ at all costs to protect the President and subvert the election."

Pelosi said in an MSNBC interview on Monday that Barr was "there to protect Donald Trump. He's not there as the attorney general of the people of the United States."

Read more about the standoff here.

Attorney General William Barr is expected to be questioned today about the Department of Justice's role in the forceful clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square that took place in June ahead of President Trump's photo-op outside St. John's Church.

Barr has repeatedly defended the actions of federal law enforcement officers.

In his interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" in early June, Barr said the protesters were moved because the Park Police wanted a larger security perimeter around the White House — not to aid the White House in staging President Trump's subsequent photo.

The clearing, though, ultimately devolved into a discordant and violent spectacle, with federal law enforcement agents clashing with protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets about 30 minutes before a curfew was set to take effect in the nation's capital. Barr was seen surveying the crowd shortly before law enforcement acted.

Barr, who has sought to distance himself from the official order to clear the protesters, also claimed in June that the protesters at Lafayette Square, which had become the center of attention for the ongoing demonstrations, were violent. There is no evidence of that claim, and CNN personnel on the scene reported the protesters were peaceful.

"They were not peaceful protesters. And that's one of the big lies that the media is  — seems to be perpetuating at this point," Barr claimed. "The Park Police was facing what they considered to be a very rowdy and non-compliant crowd. And there were projectiles being hurled at the police."

Some background: As CNN has previously reported, Barr appeared in Lafayette Square shortly before 6 p.m. ET, about an hour before Trump left the White House. In a scene that was captured on news cameras, Barr stood flanked by a security detail, his chief of staff and the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

As Barr surveyed the situation around the park, some protesters spotted and recognized him, and shouts went up.

A Justice Department official previously told CNN that Barr had been told that police believed protesters were gathering rocks to throw at law enforcement, and while he was in the park, water bottles were thrown in his direction.

CNN did not witness any water bottles being thrown at the attorney general.