Washington (CNN) The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday was supposed to be about the Mueller report, but over and over, Republican senators drilled down on something else: Hillary Clinton's emails.

Sitting at the witness table was Attorney General William Barr, ready to take questions about the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller.

But during the first moments of the hearing, Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham turned the tables and rehashed some of the flashpoints from the 2016 campaign. In all, the South Carolina Republican mentioned Clinton more than 10 times in his opening statement.

He spoke about how a Clinton associate used "a software program called BleachBit to wipe this email server clean," referring to the private email server that Clinton used while secretary of state. Graham also repeated an intriguing (but not illegal) detail that one of Clinton's associates "took a hammer and destroyed" some of the electronic devices she used to access her emails.

The FBI, then led by James Comey, investigated Clinton during the 2016 campaign for mishandling classified information on her email server. The probe determined that Clinton had been "extremely careless," and Comey publicly shared details about the investigation that damaged Clinton's standing in the polls. But she ultimately wasn't charged with any crimes.

Read More