On Wednesday, US Attorney General Bill Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding his mishandling of the release of the Mueller Report. Needless to say, everything didn’t go as planned.
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The day started with news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrote and delivered 2 letters to the attorney general admonishing him for completely misrepresenting the findings of the nearly 2-year long investigation into possible Trump collusion and obstruction.
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote.. “We communicated that concern to the Department on March 25. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigation.”
Following this bombshell news. everything pretty much went downhill from there.
At the start of the Senate hearing, Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsay Graham — who’s better known these days as a Donald Trump lap dog — set the tone early by letting Barr know Republican committee members would lob him nothing but softballs. In fact, Graham admitted in his opening remarks that although he did not read the entire 400-page Mueller Report (and doesn’t intend to), he has concluded that any further investigation into Donald Trump should be over and done with.
Both Graham and his GOP colleagues then made an art form out of somehow diverting every question about Donald Trump into a discussion of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Together, they did everything in their power to discuss everything but the actual case of the day: Trump obstruction.
However, it was the Democrats who arrived ready to box with Bill Barr and uphold the integrity of justice.
Despite the AG’s repeated reminders that he has been working almost exclusively as Donald Trump’s personal attorney rather than THE legal representative of the American people, Democrats were hell-bent on calling Barr out for his unmitigated lies, semantic word games, splitting of hairs, and overall mishandling of the release of the Mueller Report — all of which now seems clear was done to protect Trump.
Check out some of the highlights of the day.
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Watch Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii rip into Barr:
Watch Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris
of California back Bill Barr into a corner:
Attorney General Bill Barr was eager to appear before the friendly Republican-led Senate committee on Wednesday. However, he has since announced that he will not show up for his scheduled appearance before the Democratic-led House committee on Thursday.
Unlike the Senate structure, the House format was designed to prevent Barr from filibustering and running out the clock on allotted questioning time the way he did on Wednesday. Additionally, Barr would have been subjected to 30 minutes of non-stop questioning from Democratic representatives and their expert legal-minded staff members, which he has seemingly feared would trap him into either telling the truth or perjuring himself.
Apparently, Bill Barr simply doesn’t want that type of honest pressure — which is why he’ll be as far away from the House chamber on Thursday as possible.
Fortunately, House Democrats still hold a “Trump” card and intend to use it by calling Robert Mueller himself to testify at a future date. Allowing Mueller to speak and directly deliver his conclusions outside of Barr’s partisan, Trump-protecting summary, may now be the only way left to get to the whole truth and uphold the standard of justice.
Thanks for the summary DJ. I didn’t watch any of it. I’m not sure what Senate Dems expected from Barr(?) But they should have expected him to present as a “hostile” witness (if you will)….and apparently that’s exactly how he behaved. Re: Mueller’s letter to Barr “admonishing him for completely misrepresenting the findings of the nearly 2-year long investigation” Mueller spent 2 yrs and at least $25 million dollars investigating and indicting peons associated with Trump while basically choosing NOT to go after Trump out of respect for the office of the presidency. Mueller also chose to extend that same *exempt from charges* privilege to Trump’s 3 adult children and also Kushner. Then Mueller folded up shop, handed in his report and went home. Trump and his sycophants..especially Barr and Faux News…had about 19 days to push whatever “exonerated” narrative they wanted to concerning the conclusions of Mueller’s report. Personally,… Read more »