PHOENIX — Back in February, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema broke with fellow Senate Democrats to confirm Trump attorney general nominee William Barr.
Barr, she said, supplied the right answers to her questions in their private interview.
Now Sinema has more questions for Barr, and they have another private meeting scheduled for this week at the Capitol.
"It should be pleasant," Sinema said dryly during an interview Friday at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual convention in Phoenix.
Sinema took some time last February to walk me through her thinking on the Barr vote. Her conclusion:
"I feel satisfied that (Barr) believes in faithfully executing the laws of our country and will defend not only federal law but defend our constitution against any threats to it."
But now there is new information involving Barr's handling of the Mueller report.
"There have been some troubling reports - troubling for me - that Mr. Barr may have testified in a committee hearing in a way that was not accurate or truthful," Sinema said Friday, alluding to Barr's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.
"I have asked Mr. Barr for a meeting so that he and I can discuss these apparent discrepancies and so that I can find the truth of the matter."
Sinema also said she was "dismayed" that Barr recommended that the president invoke executive privilege to keep the unredacted Mueller report from members of Congress.
Sinema's vote to confirm Barr, along with two other Democrats, was her first vote on a Trump cabinet appointee, one sure to be in the spotlight. The vote for a Republican nominee helped to polish the independent credentials Sinema stressed during her successful Senate campaign last fall.
But Barr's handling of the Mueller report, and what many view as his apparent partisanship in defending the president, could tarnish that vote.
Sinema had said after the release of the Mueller report that she wouldn't comment on it until she and other members of Congress could read the unredacted version.
Now it's Barr who's keeping the unredacted report from her.
So does she regret her vote to confirm the attorney general?
"Based on the information I had at the time, (the decision) was correct," Sinema said.