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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,063 posts)
Sun May 5, 2019, 01:53 PM May 2019

Enough with Barr's filter; let's hear from the source

By Eugene Robinson

The Washington Post

It’s Mueller time.

We need public, no-holds-barred testimony before Congress by special counsel Robert Mueller, and we need it now. As we saw Wednesday, trying to get the truth out of Attorney General William Barr is like squeezing blood from a stone.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee did wring out a few droplets. Thanks to Sen. Kamala Harris of California — the last person any defendant should want to see at the prosecution table — we learned that Barr did not even look at the voluminous evidence underlying Mueller’s report before exonerating President Trump of obstruction of justice. Barr did this despite the line in Mueller’s report making clear that the evidence “does not exonerate” the president.

Harris also caused Barr to stammer and stumble when she asked whether Trump or anyone in the White House had ever asked him to investigate anyone; Barr didn’t say yes but didn’t say no. And questioning by other committee members revealed that Barr’s cavalier dismissal of one of the clearest acts of obstruction by the president — telling Don McGahn, then White House counsel, to have Mueller fired — rests on a laughable, made-up distinction Barr pretends to draw between “firing” and “removing” someone.

Given how he has misled the public and Congress, Barr should be, um, removed. But, of course, Trump won’t do that. In Barr he has the attorney general of his dreams, a personal advocate who puts loyalty above duty and honor. If Barr had nothing to hide, he’d be delighted to face extended questioning by staff attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee. Instead, when Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-New York, convened the committee Thursday, he sat across from an empty chair.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/robinson-enough-with-barrs-filter-lets-hear-from-the-source/

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