Minnesota Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar gave Attorney General William Barr a thorough grilling on the ten episodes of obstruction contained in Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s report, during which Barr literally argued as one of Trump’s attorneys.
During Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Klobuchar was the first of three 2020 hopefuls on the committee to question Barr, and began her remarks by scolding the AG for failing to divulge the letters that Mueller had sent complaining about the four-page summary that Barr released, but did not ask a question on the topic.
Klobuchar did go in on Barr over his conclusions, in that summary, about the acts of potential obstruction that Mueller identified. Over the course of several minutes, Klobuchar confronted Barr with citations from the Mueller report, and Barr responded to each with his rationale for concluding that the particular act may not have been obstruction.
At one point, Klobuchar scolded Barr for looking at each act individually, telling him “You look at the totality of the evidence, that’s what I learned when I was in law school. You look at the totality of the evidence and the pattern here.”
And when Klobuchar confronted Barr about one of those acts, Barr literally cited what he thought the rationale of Trump’s lawyers would be.
“The report found that after Manafort was convicted, the president himself called him a brave man for refusing to break,” Klobuchar said.
“I think what the president’s lawyers would say, if this were ever actually joined, is that the president’s statements about flipping are quite clear and expressed and uniformly the same,” Barr said, “which is by ‘flipping,’ he meant succumbing to pressure on unrelated cases to lie and compose in order to get lenient treatment.”
Klobuchar again told Barr to “Look at the pattern here,” and cited several more potential acts of potential obstruction.
Barr insisted that none of the acts could be proven to be obstruction beyond a reasonable doubt, and Klobuchar concluded by saying “Again, I look at the totality of the evidence, and when you look at it, it is a pattern, and that is different than having one incident.”
Watch the clip above, via C-Span.
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