After hours of listening to Attorney General William Barr answer questions from lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee about his handling of the special counsel’s Russia report, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) had apparently heard enough of what he had to say.

So when it came time for her to question Barr, she chose instead to deliver a scorching monologue castigating his handling of the Russia investigation and the decisions he made before releasing the full Mueller report to the public.

“Mr. Barr, now 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 reputations for the liar and grifter who sits in the Oval Office,” she told the attorney general.

Hirono accused Barr of having consistently taken President Trump’s side over the interests of the American people, starting with his decision to send a 19-page unsolicited memo to the Justice Department criticizing the Mueller investigation in June 2018 — well before he ever became attorney general.

She also slammed him for waiting weeks to release the full report on Mueller’s findings, and for doing so only after he’d held a press conference in which he personally cleared the president of obstruction of justice and declared there had been “no collusion.”

“When you finally did decide to release the report, over a congressional recess and on the eve of two major religious holidays, you called a press conference to once again try to clear Donald Trump before anyone had a chance to read the special counsel report and come to their own conclusions,” Hirono said.

WOW -- @maziehirono *goes in* on Barr, says "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 reputations for the liar and grifter who sits in the Oval Office." pic.twitter.com/nmENNZjyQL — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2019

The senator continued:

But 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 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 capped off her monologue by calling on Barr to resign: “Being attorney general of the United States is a sacred trust. You have betrayed that trust. America deserves better. You should resign.”

The hearing had been tense and adversarial at times, but Hirono’s political grandstanding was a startling departure from the tone of the testimony up to that point

Hirono did actually attempt to ask Barr questions after her speech, including whether he thought Trump’s behavior — when he fired FBI Director James Comey, for instance, or when he asked White House counsel Don McGahn to lie for him — was “appropriate,” even if it didn’t rise to the level of a crime.

But Barr, understandably, wasn’t exactly inclined to engage with Hirono’s questions after all that. Instead, he simply referred her back to the report and stated he was only “willing to talk about what is criminal.”

Hirono continued to press Barr until Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) interceded and accused Hirono of “slandering” Barr.

After Hirono calls on Barr to resign, @LindseyGrahamSC interrupts her and angrily accuses her of "slandering" Barr pic.twitter.com/TE76l2hrd3 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2019

“I do not think that I’m slandering anyone,” Hirono replied, and ended her questions.

Hirono’s speech and the tense exchange that followed didn’t solicit much new information from Barr — the ostensible point of holding such a hearing in the first place.

But it did illuminate Democrats’ frustrations with Barr and the still-unanswered questions about his role in the conclusion of the investigation — something that many senators believe only Mueller himself will be able to answer.

Hirono’s full comments to Barr are transcribed below: