Democrats have been hounding Trump’s AG nominee, Bill Barr, today over possibly recusing himself in the Mueller investigation. The line of questioning typically asks if Barr will follow the advice of the DOJ ethics committee and Barr has said over and over that he will consult them, but the ultimate decision is in his hand.
So that’s the context around this clip where Mazie Hirono further hounds Barr on the issue.
Watch:
Hirono is so condescending in the way she questions Barr, but he sticks to his guns on his judgement being the ultimate decision.
If you watched to the end, you heard Barr correct Hirono on suggesting that Sessions didn’t want to recuse himself, but he did follow the advice of the ethics committee. She had also accused Barr of saying he would not follow their advice. What Barr pointed out to Hirono is that Sessions recused himself over a different provision, one that had to do with the political conflict because he worked for the Trump campaign.
Hirono then accused Barr of having his own political context that would necessitate recusal, saying…
In the context of all of the things you have done, basically to get the attention of President Trump to nominate you, I would say there’s a political context to what your decision should be also.
What a condescending idiot. Just because he wrote that memo in 2017 that related to obstruction of justice and Trump firing Comey, he now must recuse himself from the Mueller investigation? What a joke.
Barr has been dealing with this crap all day, first from Patrick Leahy, who called Barr’s memo a job application to President Trump. Barr said that’s ludicrous, that if he wanted the job there are much more direct ways of getting Trump’s attention that writing an 18-page memo and sending to the DOJ and other pertinent officials.
Democratic Sen. Leahy pressed William Barr over his “job application” memo criticizing the Russia probe.
Barr defended the probe and assured that “executive privilege” Rudy Giuliani has brandished will not result in any alterations of the final report before its public release pic.twitter.com/NFJ6mrsXJD
— POLITICO (@politico) January 15, 2019
Leahy then accused him of publicly criticizing the Russia investigation, but Barr again hit back asking when he had criticized the Russia investigation. Leahy didn’t have an answer and then put that question to Barr, who said he thought Russia did attempt to influence our elections and wasn’t criticizing it.
My point is Democrats have been like a broken record on the issue of recusal and the Mueller investigation, but most of them were at least pleasant about it. Hirono was in my opinion the absolute worst.
You can watch more of her interview here, and yes, there’s more condescension in the rest of it. I just don’t have time to get to it all: