William Barr gives up, tries to throw Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein under the bus
Attorney General William Barr stuck to the script as long as he could during his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony today. He was clearly trying to split the difference between falsely claiming that Robert Mueller’s report vindicated Donald Trump, and creating the false appearance that he and Mueller had no issues with each other. But by the end of it, a withered and increasingly bewildered Barr simply gave up and tried to throw Mueller and Rod Rosenstein under the bus.
Late in the day, after William Barr had been cornered on his decision making process regarding the Mueller report, he claimed that he wasn’t solely making the decisions. When pressed for who else was making decisions, he quickly offered the name of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, thus implying that it was Rosenstein who should be held responsible for the phony summary.
Then came the surreal moment in which a clearly defeated William Barr didn’t want to answer yet another potentially incriminating question, and he simply said “ask Bob Mueller when he comes here.” Up to now, Barr’s entire goal was to try to convince us all that we didn’t need to hear directly from Mueller in any way, shape or form. But now he was almost begging to be left alone, and urging Congress to simply ask Mueller instead.
But the strangest moment came near the very end of the hearing, when William Barr claimed that Robert Mueller’s letter had been “snitty” – a fairly obscure word that means “disagreeably ill-tempered” according to Merriam Webster – and asserted that the letter had actually been written by someone else on Mueller’s team.
