US Attorney General Bill Barr has refused to testify to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on his handling of the Mueller Report, committee chairman Jerry Nadler has said.
Mr Nadler said Mr Barr had also refused to supply the committee with a full and unredacted copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible obstruction by US President Donald Trump.
Mr Nadler said he thought Mr Barr did not want to appear if he was subjected to questioning by a lawyer from the committee in addition to its members.
Earlier a Democrat member of the committee said Mr Barr will be subpoenaed if does not appear for the hearing.
"We plan on subpoenaing him if he decides not to show up. He can run but he can't hide," Mr Jeffries told reporters.
The Attorney General has defended his handling of the Mueller Report and has denied claims that he misrepresented the Special Counsel's findings.
Mr Barr was today appearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee and faced tough questions over why he concluded that US President Donald Trump had not obstructed justice.
The Mueller Report detailed extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to show a criminal conspiracy.
The report also highlighted a series of actions Mr Trump took to try to impede the investigation and did not exonerate the US President of the crime of obstruction of justice.
The attorney general and his deputy Rod Rosenstein determined however there was insufficient evidence to establish that President Trump had committed obstruction.
"We felt that ... the government would not be able to establish obstruction," Mr Barr said, under questioning today from Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.
He said that he was "absolutely" confident in his decision.
Mr Barr also said he was "frankly surprised" that Mr Mueller had not reached a conclusion himself on whether President Trump had obstructed justice.
"I think that if he felt that he shouldn't go down the path of making a traditional prosecutorial decision, then he shouldn't have investigated," he said.
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Democrats have accused Mr Barr of trying to protect Mr Trump and some have called for his resignation, but today he defended the way he dealt with the report's release and the redactions made by the Justice Department.
His appearance before the US Senate comes after a letter he received from Mr Mueller was made public.
In it, the special counsel expressed concerns that Mr Barr's summary of his report "did not fully capture the context, nature and substance" of the findings and caused "public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation".
Mr Barr said today that Mr Mueller's concerns related to how the summary was being reported in the media.
"He was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report," Mr Barr said.
