The Democrats’ depraved smear campaign against William Barr sank to a new low this week.
After attacking his integrity in a Senate hearing Wednesday, Democrats are now calling on Barr to resign, alleging that the attorney general engaged in a cover-up to protect President Donald Trump by providing a misleading summary of Robert Mueller’s more-than-400-page report, which has been released in full with minimal redactions.
Dems call on Barr to resign
To prove that the AG has dishonored his office by acting as President Trump’s “personal lawyer,” Democrats this week pointed to letter written by Mueller, dated March 27, which stated that Barr’s four-page summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his 448-page report. But Mueller never actually said that Barr’s letter was inaccurate; he objected to the public’s interpretation of his conclusions.
Democrats have nevertheless latched on to the Mueller letter to buttress the argument that Barr ignored Mueller’s findings to wrongly “exonerate” Trump. Indeed, Mueller’s letter was the context for a Kavanaugh-confirmation-hearing-like smearing on Wednesday by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sens. Richard Blumenthal (CT), Mazie Hirono (HI), Kamala Harris (CA), Dianne Feinstein (CA), and Cory Booker (NJ).
In a particularly disgraceful moment, Sen. Hirono harangued Barr about his allegedly dishonorable conduct, characterized him as a stooge for Trump, and demanded that he resign — a call that was widely echoed by Dems throughout the day on Wednesday. After Barr told Sen. Harris that he did not review all the underlying evidence of obstruction of justice himself — Barr said that it’s standard practice for prosecutors to rely on memos characterizing evidence rather than the underlying evidence itself — Harris told reporters that Barr should step down.
“I believe that what was absolutely enlightening and should be deeply troubling to the entire American public is that he made a decision and didn’t review the evidence,” Harris said. “No prosecutor worth her salt would make a decision about whether the president of the United States was involved in an obstruction of justice without reviewing the evidence. This attorney general lacks all credibility and has compromised the American public’s ability to believe that he is a purveyor of justice.”
Democrats have pointed to Barr’s unawareness of Mueller’s legal reasoning as proof that his decision to not charge Trump with obstruction was somehow politically motivated. In hearings on April 9 and 10 before Congress, Barr said that he was unaware whether Mueller agreed with his conclusion. The release of Mueller’s letter Tuesday further fed the Democrat argument that Barr wrongly cleared Trump and should resign.
Democrats are now demanding Barr’s resignation practically in unison, including 2020 candidates former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Booker, Sen. Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (CA), and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro called on Barr to step down on Tuesday, even before Barr testified.
Hillary Clinton and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) agree. For her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took it a step further Thursday, accusing Barr of committing criminal perjury before Congress.
Delusional Democrats won’t give it up
The Democrats’ attacks began almost immediately after Barr released his letter in March, and they have been building since. Democrats even objected to Barr’s decision to hold a press conference on April 18 before the report’s release, during which Bar is supposed to have “spun” the Mueller report by stating that there was no collusion and defending his decision on obstruction.
How, exactly, did Barr engage in a cover-up? By releasing the full Mueller report to the public? By releasing it three whole weeks after his letter? By appearing before Congress to answer questions and allow partisan hacks to attack his character? And how, exactly, is a four-page letter supposed to capture the depth and breadth of a nearly two-year, exhaustive, globe-spanning investigation described in a report hundreds of pages long?
All of this partisan noise is an attempt by Democrats to obscure the incontrovertible conclusion of the Mueller report: there was no collusion or obstruction. They lost.
The Democrats need a fall guy for their collusion failure, so now they’re slandering an innocent man to keep the Russia narrative alive. What’s more, they want to stop the counter-investigation into surveillance on the Trump campaign in its tracks.
At the hearing Wednesday, Barr again reiterated that he is working with FBI director Christopher Wray to figure out “what went down” in the early stages of the Russia investigation. No wonder the Democrats want him gone.
Barr fires back
As for Barr, he didn’t take the Democrats’ attacks lying down. At his hearing Wednesday, Barr calmly fired back at the Democrats’ slander with the same demeanor that he showed at the April 18 press conference.
“We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon,” Barr said during an exchange with Blumenthal.
And to Democrats who claimed Barr threw away his reputation to protect Trump, Barr explained that it’s not his job as a prosecutor to exonerate anyone.
“I didn’t exonerate,” Barr said. “I said that we did not believe that there was sufficient evidence to establish obstruction. The job of the Justice Department is now over… The report is now in the hands of the American people. Everyone can decide for themselves. There’s an election in 18 months – that’s a very democratic process. But we’re out of it.”
The fabricated Barr “scandal” has to be the dumbest, most shameless episode in the never-ending Russia story. It seems that the collusion delusion nightmare will never end — at least not if Democrats have anything to say about it.
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