‘I SEEN YOU SEE ME SEE YOU DO IT.’…..U.S. SENATOR MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI.) TO U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR — 05/01/2019
Mazie Keiko Hirono, 71, is the first elected female senator from Hawaii, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, the first U.S. senator born in Japan and the nation’s first Buddhist senator.
William Pelham Barr, 68, was appointed by Donald Trump as the 85th. United States Attorney General, a position he previously held under George H.W. Bush from 1991-’93.
Hirono skewered Barr the other day.
Burned him at the stake.
Said she:
“Mr. Barr, now the American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office…You lied to Congress…But now we know more about your deep involvement and trying to cover up for Donald Trump…You used every advantage of your office to create the impression that the president was cleared of misconduct. You put the power and authority of the office of the attorney general and the Department of Justice behind a public relations effort to help Donald Trump protect himself. You did exactly what I thought you’d do, it’s why I voted against your confirmation. I expected you would try to protect the president and indeed you did… Being attorney general of the United States is a sacred trust. America deserves better. You should resign.”
Hirono’s excoriation of Barr surely would have continued were it not for South Carolina Republican and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham having heard enough.
Red-cheeked and exasperated he stopped her.
“Listen,” he interjected. “You’ve slandered this man. You have slandered this man from top to bottom. So if you want more of this, you’re not going to get it…”
To which Hirono responded respectfully, “You have your opinion and I have mine.”
And how about Kamala Harris?
Kamala Devi Harris is the junior United States Senator from California who is running for the Democratic nomination for President in the 2020 election.
No senator managed to elicit more valuable information during the questioning of Barr before the Senate Judiciary Committee than she.
Thanks to Harris we know that the two senior administration officials who proclaimed Trump’s innocence — Barr and deputy AG Rod Rosenstein who has since announced his resignation — did so after examining as much of the evidence as Moe, Larry and Curly did.
A commitment not to uphold the rule of the law but to protect the president from its consequences.
Hirono and Harris. Tearing it up. No holds barred.
Tearing him up. To pieces. Leaving him stammering.
Stuttering.
Compromised.
Barr was made to look like two-day-old gauze on an oozing cut. A band-aid on a broken leg might be more apropos. He appeared to be nothing more than a patch on a well-worn tire. A foil.
A protector of Donald Trump rather than of the people. Weak. More holes than Swiss Cheese.
A nothing.
No wonder he blew off the House Judiciary Committee.
Harris, a former prosecutor and DA of San Francisco, cornered Barr into making a stunning admission with some asperity but more guile.
The upshot?
He never reviewed the evidence.
He never reviewed the evidence.
HE NEVER REVIEWED THE EVIDENCE!!!
Questioned by Harris, Attorney General William P. Barr testified under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1 that he did not review the evidence in the Mueller Report before he issued his four-page redacted summary of a 448-page report to Congress and the American public.
Further he claimed no knowledge of any challenge to the accuracy of his findings in spite of receiving a letter from Mueller dated March 27 in which the Special Counsel stated that Barr’s summary had sowed “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.”
Barr boiled down the investigation to a pair of principal conclusions: that the special counsel did not find Trump had coordinated with Russia to interfere in the campaign; and that no decision had been rendered as to whether or not the president obstructed justice.
Mueller complained to Barr that his depiction “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance” of the special counsel’s findings and that he was concerned in particular that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and created public misunderstandings about the office’s work.
“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mueller wrote in the letter. “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 investigations.”
Barr spun, he edited, he misrepresented and he misled.
He knew what he was doing.
An appointed cherry-picker of the facts; a pro at excluding key details and distorting reality.
And as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) described Barr’s testimony, “I mean boy, that’s some masterful hairsplitting.”
Calling Mueller’s letter “a bit snitty,” Barr went further, pulling rank and explaining that as Attorney General he is Mueller’s boss and the final arbiter of the report’s circulation.
“[Mueller is] part of the Department of Justice. His work concluded when he submitted his report to the attorney general. At that point, it was my baby, and I was making a decision as to whether or not to make it public. It was my decision how and when to make it public — not Bob Mueller’s,” he flatly asserted, jowls aquiver.
Democrats were aghast while the White House was supportive of Barr to say the least.
After the hearing concluded, press secretary Sarah Sanders was only too happy to tweet, “AG Bill Barr served President George H.W. Bush honorably as AG and has done the same for President Trump. Democrats only disgrace and humiliate themselves with their baseless attacks on such a fine public servant.”
Representative Ted Deutch (D-FL.) parried by simply asking, “Why does the attorney general of the United States continue to apparently view his job as the personal attorney of the president rather than the top law enforcement officer in America?”
Senators Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) joined other 2020 Democratic hopefuls — and Mazie Hirono, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Van Hollen — in calling for Barr to step down.
He lied to Congress on April 10 when he claimed he didn’t know whether or not Mueller supported his March 24 summary of the report.
In fact Mueller’s March 27 letter to Barr expressed the special counsel’s profound displeasure.
He tap danced around Harris’ inquiry about whether the White House had asked him to investigate anyone, without saying, “no.”
(Well-established historical norms are intended to maintain independence between the enforcement of US laws and the president’s political agenda).
He mischaracterized Mueller’s decisions by saying he did not know why Mueller decided against ruling whether or not Trump had obstructed justice; in fact the special counsel identified no fewer than 10 different instances where obstruction may have occurred.
(Further Barr was eminently aware of Mueller’s adherence to DOJ policy mandating against indicting a sitting president).
He claimed to be in the dark regarding critical findings in the report such as information-sharing between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“What information was shared?,” he replied to NJ Senator Cory Booker’s queries, he Booker, rightfully concerned “over [the] 200 connections between a presidential campaign and a foreign power, sharing information” as detailed in the report.
And he didn’t read the underlying evidence.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler knows that Barr’s act was geared toward achieving two goals: to spin in favor of Trump; and perhaps more importantly, to frame the Mueller investigation in a manner that makes it easier to continue to refuse congressional demands for all of the evidentiary material upon which the report is based.
Congress’ broad but not unlimited investigative power is rooted in its constitutional basis.
Congressional authority over the material addressed in the Mueller report flows from two constitutional sources.
Number one, Congress has the general power to legislate on such matters as the integrity of elections, relations with foreign powers, and the honest and efficient operation of the executive branch.
Secondly, it has the power to impeach the president, vice-president and other civil officers.
The hands of Congress cannot be tied.
In order to address the newly apparent danger of covert foreign interference in U.S. elections, it must understand the nature and extent of the threat.
Volume I of the Mueller report and the evidence on which it is based is a treasure trove of indispensable information pertaining to this issue.
Also, it is Congress and not the AG, charged with determining whether presidential conduct amounts to a high crime or misdemeanor meriting impeachment.
Thus Congress cannot fulfill its constitutional role without full access to the complete report and its supporting evidence.
Nadler’s subpoena request for this material with a deadline of last Wednesday has been ignored.
To the DOJ the request is beyond their purview and is “not legitimate oversight.”
A new deadline to comply by 9:00 AM Eastern Monday May 6 was issued to the Justice Department in a letter Friday from Nadler to Barr.
A conflicting set of internal DOJ directives seemingly favors Barr and not Mueller.
Mueller’s role as special counsel was to investigate Russian election interference, cooperation with such interference by the Trump campaign, and any matters arising incidental to that investigation. This meant investigating the president.
Yet DOJ policy barred him from indicting Trump regardless of the evidence he unearthed and decreed that the singular remedy for presidential misbehavior is impeachment.
Mueller concluded the following: 1.) the evidence supported a criminal case for obstruction against the president; 2.) in deference to DOJ policy, he should not expressly make that determination; and 3.) the proper venue for judging the evidence he gathered was Congress.
The Mueller report is a referral to the legislature, an invitation to Congress to take and judge the evidence itself.
In this context it seems impossible for the Justice Department to deny Congress when Mueller’s invitation to them is accepted and they ask for his evidence.
Nadler could dramatically strengthen the House’s legal position and neutralize all of the countervailing drama by plainly stating that his committee’s request is made pursuant to the House’s constitutional authority to investigate impeachable conduct by a president.
On that basis there is no legally supportable ground to refuse an evidentiary request by Congress. Plus it might infuse a sense of urgency and thereby expedite the proceedings.
But it would play right into Barr’s hands.
The Democrats do not want to make a formal declaration that the House or any committee is conducting an impeachment investigation. Once railroaded on that track with no way off, they would face the near-certainty of acquittal in the Senate, regardless of the strength of the evidence and the risk of losing the war of public opinion and then the 2020 election.
By refusing Nadler, Barr is consciously trying to force the House to assume a legally correct but politically hazardous legal posture.
What to do? Contempt proceedings? Further legal recourse? Negotiate?
Perhaps someone wearing a White Hat will appear.
Otherwise summoning those who sport long white coats might be the answer.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in May 2019.]
