Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday that the Democrats and other anti-Trump adversaries exploited special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe to undermine President Donald Trump.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Attorney General William Barr’s testimony on the Mueller report, Lee said Democrats and other anti-Trump political operatives exploited the Mueller report to undermine Trump’s administration.

He quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, saying:

Nothing is so politically effective as the ability to charge that one’s opponent and his associates are not merely wrongheaded, naive and ineffective, but, in all probability, crooks. And nothing so effectively gives an appearance of validity to such charges as a Justice Department investigation.

During the Senate hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the Mueller report has concluded that President Trump did not collude with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election and that he did not obstruct justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey.

“So the bottom line is we’re here for Mr. Barr, the results of a two-year investigation into the Trump campaign, all things Russia, the actions the president took before and after the campaign, $25 million, 40 FBI agents,” Graham said.

“I appreciate very much what Mr. Mueller did for the country. I have read most of the report. For me, it is over,” Graham concluded in his opening statement.

“That observation, I think has been borne out, time and time again, over the past two years,” Lee added. “Time and time again, the president’s political adversaries have exploited the Mueller probe, its mere existence, to spread baseless innuendo in an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the 2016 election and the effectiveness of this administration.”