Before Attorney General William Barr could even utter a word during his testimony today before the House Judiciary Committee, nasty legal analysts at CNN were already doing Democrats' work discrediting him as a “delusional,” political prop who was assisting President Trump’s re-election campaign.
At the end of the 8:00AM EST hour on CNN’s New Day, co-hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota asked legal analysts Laura Coates and Jeffrey Toobin to give their take on Barr’s upcoming testimony later that morning.
After the Attorney General defended his nonpartisanship in his pre-released opening statement, Toobin bashed Barr as so ignorant he doesn’t even know when’s being used by the president:
“I mean, sometimes if you are such a toady you know what to do even if you're not specifically instructed to do it,” he mocked.
Weird, Toobin didn’t try to discredit the Attorney General Eric Holder as a partisan toady after he bragged that he was President Obama’s “wingman.” In fact, Toobin was still singing Holder’s praises on CNN as recently as this past January.
But Toobin wasn’t done being nasty. He went on to defend violent Antifa anarchists by suggesting that Barr and the DOJ were only going into Portland to “stir up trouble” and “solicit campaign video” for the president’s re-election campaign:
You know, one of the key questions that is broader than just William Barr, but certainly Barr is relevant, are federal authorities, federal law enforcement going into Portland as people trying to keep the peace and protect federal property, or are they stirring up more trouble. Are they soliciting campaign video for Donald Trump's re-election campaign by trying to show that the degree of anger in the streets?
Fellow CNN legal analyst Laura Coates also was enraged by Barr’s statement that he acts independent of President Trump. “Are you delusional?” she asked, ranting that Barr has “politicized” the Department of Justice:
Most of the questions I have surrounding fall under the umbrella of whether he's aware of just how politicized the Department Justice has become? Instead of actually upholding the rule of law and enforcing the federal statutes and ensuring there's equality under the law and no persons above it, he has done the polar opposite in so many instances.
Hold up. Was it not political when the Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder wiretapped a Fox News reporter? Was it not political when Holder refused to comply with a subpoena to testify before Congress on the Fast and Furious Scandal? Was it not political when Obama’s second AG, Loretta Lynch, met with Bill Clinton secretly in the middle of the Hillary Clinton email investigation? Where were CNN’s legal experts wringing their hands then? Oh that’s right, they were covering up or defending that very political behavior.
Coates also condemned Barr’s data-driven statements about police shootings as, “disturbing.”
This DNC propaganda was sponsored by Liberty Mutual.
You can read the transcript below:
CNN New Day
7/28/20
8:50am EST
LAURA COATES: I had questions for him prior to reading his opening statement and now I have questions after reading it, where I wonder are you delusional? In many respects, because he leads the public to believe on the one hand that he is here and he was invited. He was forced to come back to the Department of Justice because he alone was going to remove it from the political bowels that apparently they were in. When in reality, he solicited the opportunity, he asked for it and he embraced it with open arms and all for apparently a reason to politicize it. As Jeffrey has already talked about the questions that has for him, most of the questions I have surrounding fall under the umbrella of whether he's aware of just how politicized the department justice has become? Instead of actually upholding the rule of law and enforcing the federal statutes and ensuring there's equality under the law and no persons above it, he has done the polar opposite in so many instances. One of the areas I found most disturbing frankly, was his notion in talking about well, it was a horrible killing of George Floyd, but then went on to talk about how black on black crime is the bigger issue to focus on, and people have been condemning the police, unnecessarily. This is not someone who has an attachment with reality of what we’re actually seeing, even giving the stats about the number of white men versus black men who’ve been killed by police this year all the while not answering the question, where is the data that the department of justice intends to provide to give this information as opposed to in the opening statement?
JOHN BERMAN: The Attorney General, let’s just [indiscernible], he does address the idea that he's a political attorney general as opposed to someone just dispensing justice. He says, ‘my decisions on criminal manners have been left to the independent judgment based on the law and fact without any direction or interference from the white house or anyone from outside the department.’ He even dropped the factotum bomb, Jeffrey, he said he's not the president's factotum.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Well, I mean, that's an assertion and the question is what do his actions show? I mean, sometimes if you are such a toady you know what to do even if you're not specifically instructed to do it. I think, you know, Laura raises the broader question of the response to the unrest in the cities. And specifically what's going in Portland. You know, one of the key questions that is broader than just William Barr, but certainly Barr is relevant, are federal authorities, federal law enforcement going into Portland as people trying to keep the peace and protect federal property, or are they stirring up more trouble. Are they soliciting campaign video for Donald Trump's re-election campaign by trying to show that the degree of anger in the streets? I think the response to protests whether it's in Portland or in the photo-op in Lafayette Square in front of the White House, that is another area that I’m sure will be explored today.
