It took nearly four hours for Attorney General William Barr's Wednesday hearing before Congress to get spicy when Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat, told Barr to his face that he should resign.“The American people know you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office,” Hirono said to Barr.“Being attorney general of the United States is a sacred trust. You have betrayed that trust. America deserves better. You should resign.”Hirono said Barr lied to Congress when he said that he didn’t know if special counsel Robert Mueller had objections to his March 24 summary of the Mueller report.“But you knew,” Hirono said in reference to Mueller’s just-published letter in which he stated that Barr had misrepresented his report and created confusion. “You lied.”Hirono also accused Barr of using his status as attorney general to clean up a public relations scandal for Trump:
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“When we read the report, we knew Robert Mueller’s concerns were valid and that your version of events was false. You used every advantage of your office to create the impression that the president was cleared of misconduct. You selectively quoted fragments from the special counsel’s report, taking some of the most important statements out of context and ignoring the rest. You put the power and authority of the office of the attorney general and the Department of Justice behind a public relations effort to help Donald Trump protect himself.”
Hirono was so pointed in her attacks on Barr that Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, condemned her remarks as “slander.”“You have slandered this man from top to bottom,” Graham said. “You want more of this line of questioning, you are not going to get it.”
Cover: Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, questions Attorney General William Barr as he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)