Senate Judiciary panel chief wants Barr testimony on Mueller report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said on Monday he wants Attorney General William Barr to appear before the panel to discuss the special counsel's report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump's strongest allies in the Senate, also said he wanted to look into actions that led to the launch of Mueller's investigation.

“What's next, I hope, will be that he will come to the committee (and) release as much as possible of the Mueller report,” Senator Lindsey Graham said, referring to the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

On Sunday, Barr said in a four-page summary that Mueller's team had not found evidence of criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and Russia in the 2016 election and had left unresolved the issue of whether Trump obstructed justice.

Barr, a Trump appointee who took office last month, said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that the evidence did not justify bringing obstruction charges.

Graham, who said he planned to speak with Barr later on Monday, told reporters that he wanted to look into the warrant granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that in part led to the investigation into Russia and Trump's campaign.

He also said he wanted to examine the origins of a dossier on alleged links between Trump's associates and Russia that had been sent during the 2016 presidential campaign to the FBI, which had already had already begun its investigation.