It ended with a whimper, specifically from konztitooshunal skolar Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who salved the wounded fee-fee of Wllliam Barr, Attorney General of the United States, who ended a rough afternoon as a witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee by referring to the letter written to him by special counsel Robert Mueller as, "a little bit snitty," which was not a word prior to Wednesday afternoon. Lee decided that the AG needed a hug.

LEE: Attorney General Barr, I just want to thank you for your service to our country and especially today I want to thank you for your civility and your composure. Amidst what has been a needlessly and unfairly hostile environment. Your professionalism has been remarkable. I'm grateful. Thank you.

Lee probably had in mind the moment in which Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, came out of her corner like Mike Tyson after Michael Spinks.

HIRONO: Mr. Barr, 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 liar who sits in the oval office. You once turned down a job offer from Donald Trump to represent him as his private attorney. At your confirmation hearing you told Senator Feinstein, quote, "the job of attorney general is not the same as representing the president." So you know the difference, but you've chosen to be the president's lawyer and side with him over the interest of the American people. To start with, you should never have been involved in supervising the Robert Mueller investigation. You wrote a 19-page unsolicited memo, which you admit was not based on any fact, attacking the premise of the investigation.

Then it got worse.

Mazie Hirono told the honest truth about William Barr. Alex Wroblewski Getty Images

But now, we know more about your deep involvement in trying to cover up for Donald Trump. Being Attorney General of the United States is a sacred trust. You have betrayed that trust. America deserves better and you should resign.

Committee chairman Lindsey Graham tried to call Hirono on the carpet for her blatant statement of a truth that Barr's entire appearance made plain to anyone who was watching.

Every now and then, this truth would pop out: Barr, saying that the president* had a right to fire Mueller if he'd decided to because the president was an innocent man getting bad press; Barr, dueling with Senator Amy Klobuchar over the definition of the word "obstruction"; and Barr, explaining to Senator Cory Booker that there was no contact between anyone in the Trump campaign and any representative of the Russian oligarchical state, apparently blissfully unaware of the episode in which Paul Manafort shared swing state polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik.

And, finally, when Senator Kamala Harris got hold of him and left his innards all over the committee room's floor.

HARRIS: Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?

Barr was up a tree. He asked Harris to repeat the question. He twisted around in his chair, apparently looking for a trap door. Finally, he decided, preposterously, to quibble with the word, "suggest."

BARR: Yeah, but I'm trying to grapple with the word, suggest, I mean there have been discussions of matters out there. They have not asked me to open an investigation...I don't know. I wouldn't say suggested.

HARRIS: Hinted?

BARR: I don't know.

HARRIS: Inferred? You don't know? Okay.

Harris greeted Barr’s testimony with appropriate skepticism. NICHOLAS KAMM Getty Images

Harris then pried out of Barr the day's most startling, and revelatory, admission: namely that, before his now-infamous March 24 memo, in which Barr summarized Mueller's report in—shall we say?—the most favorable light possible, neither he nor Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had read the underlying material on which the report was based.



HARRIS: My question is, in reaching your conclusion, did you personally review all of the underlying evidence?"

BARR: No.

HARRIS: Did Mr Rosenstein?

BARR: No. We accepted the statements in the report as factually accurate.

HARRIS: So you accepted the report as the evidence?

BARR: Yes.

HARRIS: You did not question or look at the underlying evidence that supports the conclusions in the report?

BARR: No.

HARRIS: I think you've made it clear, sir, that you've not looked at the evidence. We can move on.

I don't know how long Kamala Harris's campaign for president will last but, Lord above, I don't want to get crossways with the senator.

That exchange summed up the whole day, and it validated the truth that Mazie Hirono had told, and that had given Lindsey Graham the vapors. William Barr is now a blank-eyed, soulless myrmidon in the service of a half-mad, criminal presidency*, and there is no coming back from that. Once, history would remember him as a garden-variety Republican power lawyer who specialized in bailing out Republican presidencies from their own difficulties, like the Iran-Contra scandals. Now, he's just a hack in a city in which the undergrowth is full of them.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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