Good morning. Welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing for Friday, May 3rd. I'm Blake Hounchell filling in for Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman.

Stay tuned after the show for a message from the American Beverage Association. All right, on to today's news. Bill Barr didn't show up to Thursday's House Judiciary Committee hearing where Democrats greeted him with a bucket of fried chicken.

Get it? Chicken? Well, here's a little nugget for you. The Attorney General held court at Tosca,

a popular D.C. lunch spot for at least two hours. Maybe Barr was soaking in all the praise

he's been getting from the president and his allies. The Washington Post reports that Trump was,

quote, pleased with Barr's pugnacious performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

One White House official told the paper that Barr had set the narrative in a way that was

positive for the White House, and Trump campaign advisors said that Attorney General's comments have

generally been helpful. They pointed especially

to Barr's earlier remark that there was spying during the 2016 presidential race. Meanwhile,

the New York Times has a story the president will like. It reveals that the FBI sent a female

investigator to pose as a research assistant to meet with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign advisor,

back in September 2016. At the time, the FBI was trying to get a better grip on the Trump

campaign's links to Russia. This might be what Barr was referring to when he told Congress

there was spying on the Trump campaign. Expect to hear a lot about this story from Republicans in coming

days. Trump put his foot down last night in an interview with Fox News, saying he wouldn't bow to

Democrats' demands for Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, to testify on Capitol Hill.

Congress shouldn't be looking anymore. This is all. It's done, Trump said. Also last night, the president's

son-in-law Jared Kushner sat for a rare public interview, in this case with Rob Satloff of the Washington

Institute for Near East Policy. Kushner didn't make much news about his Mideast peace plan, but he did

brag that nothing's leaked from my team about the effort. The long-awaited

plan is more of an in-depth operational document, he said, whatever that means. He added,

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