Fireworks at House Judiciary Committee contempt hearing against William Barr

| 12:12 pm EDT May 8, 2019
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You wanted Attorney General William Barr held in contempt of Congress, and now you’re getting it. The House Judiciary Committee is holding a pivotal and ugly contempt hearing right now, as the Democrats on the committee use their time to spell out the violations that Barr committed at Donald Trump’s instruction, and the Republicans on the committee try to spin the narrative in Trump’s favor any way they can. But none of the back-and-forth is going to matter at the end of the day.

This is the kind of hearing that politically active people on both sides watch while it’s happening, but by the time everyone else tunes in for the nightly news, the only story that’ll filter through is the fact that the committee will have moved to hold Trump’s Attorney General in contempt – and they’re going to interpret that as the Trump regime being even more criminal – and having more to hide.

This has happened before, of course. The Republican-controlled Congress held President Obama’s Attorney General in contempt when he refused to play along with one of their phony scandals. But most Americans knew that the “Obama scandals” invented by the Republicans were phony, and thus they had no interest in what the GOP was trying to do to him. Things are very different in 2019. The majority of Americans know that Trump’s scandals are very real and very criminal, and the only debate in their minds is whether he should be impeached.

So the nature of today’s contempt hearing, overly contentious as it may be, isn’t going to matter – only the verdict is. The polls say that the American public is more in favor of impeachment now than it was two weeks ago. That’s largely due to William Barr’s disastrously dishonest testimony and subsequent failure to show up at all. Now that the House Judiciary Committee has moved to hold Barr in contempt, it should only make the impeachment drum louder. The full House will soon vote to hold Barr in contempt, and then various consequences will be dished out. Things are moving forward in the way they need to – but this is a process.