7 times AG Barr made a fool of himself during his Senate hearing

Attorney General William Barr did not make himself look good during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Before the day was out, nearly two dozen members of Congress were calling on him to resign, and cable network hosts were calling him out for his many brazen lies and misrepresentations about the Mueller report and the way he had handled its release.

Here are seven of the moments when Barr most humiliated himself during the hearing — by failing to answer simple questions, stuttering and pausing for uncomfortably long moments, and making it perfectly clear that he cares more about protecting Trump than about the truth or the law.

1) Barr stuttered and struggled to respond when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called him out for lying to Congress, as evidenced by a letter to Barr from special counsel Robert Mueller that was released Tuesday night.

2) Barr played dumb in an obvious, embarrassing way when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked him whether he’d discussed ongoing criminal investigations with anyone in the White House.

3) Barr seemed stumped when he was asked by Sen. Chris Coons (D-CT) if a campaign should contact the FBI after being offered illegal assistance from foreign adversaries — and wouldn’t even say it would be wrong for a hypothetical campaign to accept assistance from foreign adversaries affiliated with countries like North Korea or Russia.

4) Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) humiliated Barr with what should have been a simple question about whether Trump or anyone at the White House had ever asked him to open an investigation into anyone.

5) Harris got Barr to admit that he hadn’t even looked at the underlying evidence from the Mueller investigation before declaring that the investigation hadn’t found enough evidence to convict Trump of a crime.

6) Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) tried to get a straight answer out of Barr on whether he thought it was OK — not whether it was a crime, but whether it was OK — for Trump to do what Mueller’s report described. Barr replied by dissembling and defending Trump.

7) Barr stunned Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) into silence by actually saying out loud that he thinks it’s not a crime for Trump to order his subordinates to lie for him.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.