As I write this (subject to change, but highly unlikely it will happen), Attorney General William Barr is refusing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today.
His reason is the insistence by Judiciary Committee chairperson Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that, in addition to house members, committee lawyers also be allowed to grill Barr – something that has not been done for any house hearing in over 30 years.
Nadler’s reaction:
“The administration has the nerve to dictate our procedures. It’s simply part of the administration’s complete stonewalling of Congress — period.”
Let’s start with the fact that Nadler’s claim is ludicrous on its face, and thoroughly dishonest.
Barr testified all day yesterday to the Senate Judiciary committee, and withstood some of the nastiest, most vicious personal attacks I have ever heard from any congressional committee in all the years I’ve paid attention to such hearings.
How can Barr be accused of stonewalling congress on Thursday, after he testified to congress all day Wednesday?
Only a political hack, hoping voters are ignorant enough not to realize this obvious lie, would make such a statement…which, therefore, is how Jerrold Nadler views voters – and he’s far from the only one.
As for the circumstances under which non-members of congress might question someone in a committee hearing, I’ll let the Trump-hating Washington Post, via Paul Mirengoff of powerlineblog.com tell you the circumstances:
According to the Washington Post, the last time committee lawyers questioned a Cabinet official during open hearings was in the mid-1980s when Attorney General Meese testified about Iran-Contra. And Ed Meese was testifying about substantive matters, not about a memo regarding findings made by someone else in a publicly-available document.
That last part of the quote, which I put in bold print, bears repeating.
Attorney General William Barr is not testifying about some covert operation or hidden scandal. He is there to explain a memo he wrote about a report he issued a couple of weeks later – which is available for everyone to read.
You might or might not agree with how Barr wrote that memo. But, given that the subject matter it described has been made available in its entirety, so what? You can come to your own conclusions.
Add in the facts that robert mueller, who criticized the memo’s tone – thus setting the stage for these hearings – a) was given a chance to suggest revisions before its issuance and declined to do so and b) acknowledged the memo had nothing misleading or inaccurate, and what are you left with?
Nothing. That’s what you’re left with. Nothing.
The reality is that this fiasco shouldn’t be called the Barr hearings, it should be called the Seinfeld hearings. Because they are, literally, about nothing.
But mainstream media, desperate to find something – anything – to run with after mueller’s no-collusion/no legal basis for obstruction findings are latching on to it like flood victims latching on to a floating piece of wood, in the hope it will retrieve their reputations.
It won’t.
