Brian Williams is nothing if not droll. After the Barr hearings in the Senate broke for lunch, and MSNBC cut back to the studio for analysis, he deadpanned, "Nicolle Wallace has been in a state of agitation." Mild understatement. Anyone who has ever watched Wallace knows she absolutely loses her mind when she has to sit there and watch people representing the government lie, especially under oath. Frankly, not only is her outrage genuine, it's usually entertaining as hell, so generally I'm here for it.
We're also here for the way MSNBC has been covering this hearing, including fact-checking William Barr and the Republicans questioning him in real time. Moreover, they seem to be cutting over Republicans, rather than Democrats to correct the record, as if to say, "Meh. It's not like we're gonna get anything other than bullsh*t from the Republicans anyhow, we may as well talk during THEIR time."
Anyhow, in this particular clip, Wallace takes forceful issue with Barr's outright lies about Trump cooperating with the investigation rather than obstructing it. Barr's lame attempts to split hairs on whether or not "removing" the special counsel from office was the same as "firing" Mueller was just pathetic.
So I'm not going to dance around this. He's lying. He's lying about what the Mueller report finds around one of the critical flashpoints in the obstruction investigation. One of the incidents that was investigated by Robert Mueller and his obstruction investigators was the attempted firing of the special counsel. It was one of the incidents that was under investigation into days before Mueller wrapped up. He's quibbling with whether removing Mueller and firing him is the same thing. Here's how Donald Trump talked about removing/firing special counsel Mueller. This is from Chris Christie's testimony. One of five witnesses cited in the footnotes of the Mueller obstruction report, about Donald Trump's efforts to fire Robert Mueller. Chis Christie recalled a telephone conversation with the president in which the president asked what Christie thought about the president firing, FIRING, not removing, the special counsel. Christie advised against doing so because there was no basis for the president to fire the special counsel, and the president would lose support from Republicans in Congress. I'm going to disagree with Christie on THAT. Here's McGahn's testimony. I'm not gonna read all the witnesses, but here's McGahn's testimony on the president's efforts to make McGahn fire him. Again, from the footnote in the obstruction report. Although McGahn recalled receiving multiple calls from the president on the same day, he was not certain of the specific about the dates but he was confident he had two phone conversations with the president in which the president directed him to call the acting attorney general and have the special counsel removed. It's also the colorful reporting from this report where Don McGahn says to Reince Priebus, which is the third witness to this incident, the president asked me to do some crazy shit. I'm sorry to swear. But I think we've got an attorney general lying about what is in the Mueller report around what was the most investigated flashpoints in the obstruction investigation. My question, again, is why?
"Why?" is a good question. It would be nice to know the answer, but honestly the more salient and compelling question that needs answering is how we STOP him from lying, and how quickly we can right this train before it does any FURTHER damage. Because we already know the Trump is trying desperately to overpower and neuter the legislative branch, and the DOJ with Barr as its head is doing everything in its power to help him.
