Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Damnit. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Let’s do this.

Afternoon session in the Barr hearing is getting underway.

Opening with the marble-mouthed simpleton Sen. Kennedy.

I’m already angry.

1/

The first Republicans after the break are the collusion clean-up crew.

They exist solely to give Barr a chance to clean up the messes he made in the morning.

Barr made too many messes though and there is no cleaning them up though.

Kennedy trying to spoon-feed Barr opportunities to re-spin his decision to bury the truth about Mueller’s findings, his (Mueller’s) disapproval of his whitewash, and Barr’s lies to Congress.

Lots of spin. Does nothing to absolve Barr or having lied in his memo and under oath.

Kennedy’s attempts to rehab Barr’s self-impeaching testimony falls apart as Barr proves unable to comfortably deliver a cogent excuse for clearly corrupt conduct.

Kennedy trying to testify for Barr.

Barr fails to capitalize on the testicular chamois of Kennedy’s sycophancy.

Klobuchar at the mic. Opens questioning with a tone akin to a velvet hammer.

Politely acerbic. Cutting.

Presses Barr to commit to the FBI briefing Congress on Russian intrusion into election systems.

Barr agrees. He’ll regret that. That will deepen 2016 integrity suspicion.

Klobuchar puts Barr in a bind; he’s reeling.

Asks if Trump’s efforts to threaten Cohen publicly and promise he’ll be taken of privately are obstructive.

Puts Barr in the position of having to interject his own imaginings about Trump’s thinking so as to excuse his conduct.

*taken care of privately

Klobuchar is going full jujitsu on Barr.

Barr has placed himself in the position of being Trump’s defense counsel.

Barr unwittingly pulled into revealing the extent to which that’s true by being pressed to defend Trump’s conduct.

His answers to Klobuchar will be dissected.

What was most striking about what Klobuchar boxed Barr into was the contrast between the way an uncorrupted AG would have said and what he did.

Uncorrupted AG’s are expressly detached from what the accused may have been thinking or intending.

That’s the defendant’s job to say.

Klobuchar showcased the reasons Barr must be removed as the People’s senior attorney on Trump matters.

He is the de facto defense counsel for the president.

He has abdicated his role as Attorney General.

Ben Sasse now talking like a political science undergrad who freebased a sh**load of meth.

Motor mouthed. Hyperspeed rambling about China and Russia and oligarchs.

I’m not even going to bother transcribing this speed-freak’s nutbaggery.

Ben Sasse, please, on behalf of all Americans, I beseech you...

Shut the f*** up.

Sasse appears to have been attempting to take a very circuitous route to implying somehow that the underlying problem today is that candidates don’t get enough briefings on other countries trying to corrupt them.

“You don’t need a bar and a hooker anymore.” -possibly drunk Sasse

Senator Coons speaking at a normal human pace is a glorious shift after Sasse’s auctioneer-style filibuster about..... I don’t know what.

Coons lays out Trump’s obstructive conduct and attempts to file Mueller without case.

Then asks:

“These were not in your memo, were they?”

Barr pressed to say “No... but they were in the report.”

Coons: “And they were in Mueller’s summary, weren’t they?”

Barr: 😳 Uh...

Coons cuts to the chase.

Openly lays out that Barr’s misrepresentations gave air cover to Trump in contrast to what the actual report revealed.

Closes with a call to hear Mueller’s conclusions directly.

Coons asks Barr if candidates in 2020 should notify the FBI if they are offered dirt on a rival by a persona associated with a foreign government.

Barr tries to split hairs by narrowing the scope of what type of foreign actor the answer would be a “yes” for...

(Forgive typos. Not proofreading.)

Senator Hawley (in Claire McCaskill’s old seat) makes his appearance on the big stage.

Tries to pivot to questioning the roots of the counterintel investigation. Goes nowhere.

Now randomly shifting to whether any other prez has led his staff to consider 25th amendment removal.

Hawley now reading Peter Strzok texts and ranting about how very mean and awful it is that people who hate Trump are out to get him.

GO. F***. YOURSELF.

Hawley went full Lindsey Graham.

I want to smack the smug look right off his ranty sanctimonious face.

Senator Blumenthal up now. Thankfully.

Blumenthal: “on four of the obstruction episodes, Robert Mueller concluded [the essential elements of obstruction were there].”

Blumenthal shows chart detailing the indictable incidents.

Then nails Barr with a question designed to allow him to perjure himself...

Blumenthal absolutely NAILING Barr on whether he talked with anyone in the White House about Trump-related matters.

Barr says “No.” emphatically...

...and then realizes he just boxed himself in against a former prosecutor who knew the answer before asking.

Fumbles to backtrack

Barr hastily attempts to reverse course and “clarify” that he cannot recall whether he did or did not have any conversations with anyone in the White House about any open matters and “doesn’t recall” any “substantive conversations”.

Bookmark this. It will be important.

I’d wager large sums, Blumenthal and Senate Dems have specific knowledge that Barr discussed open matters related to Mueller and his criminal referrals with the White House.

Barr was led to hastily overstate his lie and had to hastily attempt to put himself back on safe ground.

Joni Ernst up now. This will be as useful as watching a toddler attempt to write an essay on Chaucer.

I should have said Dante because this is like his Inferno. Hellish.

Thankfully MSNBC cuts in. For a change, I’ll stay put because Ernst is useless.

Nicole Wallace and Joyce Vance both weigh in to essentially reiterate the above characterization of how Blumenthal boxed Barr right into initially perjuring himself and hastily rushing to put himself in an unimpeachable place.

He told on himself.

Blumenthal caught the witness.

Nicole Wallace: “Someone should ask Barr if he has actually read the Mueller report cover to cover because he appears to have not.”

Senator Hirono: “The American people now know that you are no different than Rudy Giuliani and Kellyanne Conway. People who have sacrificed [their integrity and reputations] for a grifter and liar.”

Welp, that was a direct opening paragraph.

Hirono: “When we read the rpt, we knew Mueller’s concerns were valid and your version of events was false.

You used every advantage of your office to create the impression Trump was cleared. [...] Finally, you lied to Congress. [...] You knew you lied to Congress. Now we know.”

Hirono asks if Barr thinks Trump’s conduct was okay.

Not whether it was criminal. Whether Barr thinks it’s okay for a president to ask a White House counsel to lie.

Asks whether it’s okay for a president to dangle pardons and threaten witnesses.

Barr stares. Graham rescues.

Marsha Blackburn up.

She is an idiot.

No additional commentary required until she is done.

Since I have five minutes to kill, boy, I’m going to need a good meal and a beer after this.

This is varying degrees of infuriating in seven-minute blocks.

I’m just fantasizing about a beer and a cheeseburger until the Senate’s dumbest freshman is done.

Blackburn is so dumb, her efforts to help Barr accidentally forced him to make an awkward attempt at pivoting.

Asked him a series of questions about whether he trusted the FBI. He answers “yes” to all.

Asks if he believes the FBI would have found obstruction if it was there...

She truly doesn’t understand that the FBI *DID* find obstruction and Trump can be indicted upon leaving office.

Barr has to awkwardly pivot off his line of hasty and emphatic “yes” answers to dissemble about random nonsense.

Blackburn is a profound idiot. A clownish simpleton.

Booker up.

Opens with a fairly useless preamble about the immorality of the Trump campaign’s conduct.

That was a waste of two of his minutes.

Booker: (paraphrased) Should Americans be happy about the Trump campaign ‘seeking to benefit’ from material stolen by a foreign adversary?

Booker reframing Barr’s claim Americans should be ‘grateful’ there was ‘no collusion’.

Barr flummoxed. Not sure how to rebut the reframing.

Booker had a good point but was uncharacteristically less than sharp in the delivery.

By Booker standards, that wasn’t an effective use of a block of time.

No soundbite from what could’ve been a very incisive point.

Barr claimed we should be grateful despite shameful conduct.

So far on the day, Blumenthal was the most effective IMHO.

His cross-examination was a preview of how badly things will go for Barr vs. Adam Schiff.

Barr’s performance has been a D- on the merits but the content is nuanced.

A few more newscycle-friendly moments would help.

Repub Sen asks Barr “There was no underlying crime, correct?”

This was the basis of Barr’s theory to wave off obstruction. It is a false theory and Mueller further eviscerated it by pointing to the existence of other underlying crimes.

Again, a Repub tried help and instead hurt

Kamala Harris opens with a kick to the head.

“Has the president or anyone else asked you to open an investigation into anyone?”

Barr looks like a deer in the headlights.

BOOM.

That’s your clip.

Roundhouse to the cranium. A first kick knockout.

Second question: Did Barr look at any of the evidence underlying the report?

Barr: No

The Attorney General of the United States of America cleared the target of the most important investigation in modern history without reviewing the evidence.

Another Harris knockout.

Barr is reeling. Harris is eviscerating him. My god, this is glorious.

Barr: “That was Bob Mueller.”

Harris: “You made the charging decision.”

Barr: 😳

Harris: “You said it was your baby. What did you mean by that?”

Barr is reeling. This is a thrashing.

Harris battered Barr with a lie of questions about whether he will recuse from Mueller’s other referred cases.

Barr, flustered, says “I’m not the only decision maker here.” References Rod Rosenstein... a guy retiring in a week.

Harris’ block of questioning was must-see TV.

That was legendary.

A goosebump-producing, history-making cross-examination of a corrupt Attorney General defending a criminal president by his potential rival for the office.

That was just... wow.

I think they’re about to adjourn again... which is good because my 11-year old is telling me an apparently very important story about playing NBA2K on his PlayStation.

I missed some rambling R and am purposely muting Ted Cruz.

I’ll offer only this about Cruz: his stupid beard makes him look a basement-dwelling try-hard who somehow thinks he looks like Wolverine from X-Men.

He doesn’t. He looks ridiculous.

Senator Leahy up now. I thought they were adjourning. Somebody get Leahy a lozenge.

Asks Barr to confirm he won’t interfere in Mueller’s spinoff investigations.

Barr offers only that he will “supervise them as Attorney General”.

Leahy concludes.

Barr tries to do cleanup on his prior false testimony and statements about there being “no underlying crime”.

Now offering a new and even more ridiculous theory:

If a president knows they’re being falsely accused, they can’t obstruct an investigation at will.

That was the stupidest legal theory I’ve ever heard.

A person who believes there is no merit to accusations can obstruct being proven innocent.

That is the dumbest f’ing thing Barr has said yet.

It is legally insanely false, logically moronic, and wholly pulled from his colon.

Further, Mueller quite clearly and specifically pointed out that there WERE underlying crimes Trump was concerned about being uncovered - including the crimes for which he was named an unindicted co-conspirator along with Cohen.

Barr’s logic is melting down in full public view.

Sen. Whitehouse gets a 2nd swing.

Backs Barr into acknowledging that he was formulating his clearance of Trump before receiving the report.

Coupled with his replies to Harris, Barr has been fully outed as having whitewashed the investigation w/o reviewing the evidence or report

Klobuchar up again.

Asks if Mueller reviewed Trump’s financials. Barr doesn’t know.

Klobuchar asks if he can confirm and reply in written form.

Barr begrudgingly agrees.

Another commitment he will not like having made.

Klobuchar puts Barr on the spot by playing back his confirmation hearing testimony about presidential accountability contrasted against his behavior and the lack of consequences.

Barr has nothing more than “Presidents have been held accountable before.”

Barr is on empty.

Blumenthal up. Asks Barr to replay the conversation with Mueller about his objections to Barr’s bullsh** memo.

Barr trying to play it back, paraphrasing, which he will regret since Mueller will likely directly contradict his account.

Barr’s version is obviously false. Clearly.

Blumenthal: I know of no other instances when a Special Counsel rebuked the Attorney General.

Barr: uh.

Blumenthal asks if anyone memorialized the convo.

Barr says notes were taken. Refuses to provide them.

Graham commits to writing to Mueller to ask if he agrees w Barr.

Okay, hearing has now been adjourned.

We’re done here.

That was a doozy and it was far easier on Barr than the House hearing will be tomorrow.

Barr is exposed. Wholly outed himself. Undermined his own prior rationales. Introduced new liabilities. His hot seat is now flaming.

I’m starving. I need to take the little man out to get something to eat.

Senator Kamala Harris, former Attorney General for the State of California, 2020 candidate for the presidency, stoked my appetite.

Reasonable job done by many but Senator Harris was the star of the day.