Last night, attorney general and presidential cover-up extraordinaire William Barr abruptly announced that he would not testify as scheduled before the House Judiciary Committee today. Of particular concern to him was the committee's insistence that its attorneys, not just its members, be allowed to interrogate his dubious handling of Robert Mueller's final report during the hearing. In light of Barr's disastrous performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, this was a wise decision, because no senator managed to elicit more valuable information during questioning than longtime prosecutor Kamala Harris.

The Democratic presidential candidate began by asking Barr whether anyone at the White House ever "asked or suggested" that he "open an investigation of anyone." The question was plainly directed at President Donald Trump's public suggestions that because Mueller turned up no evidence of a much-hyped Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, his Department of Justice must now investigate the investigators. Because Trump believes the Mueller probe exonerated him, he reasons that the probe must have been the product of his political enemies' efforts to bring him down. (This argument elides the facts, for example, that Mueller catalogues numerous attempts by Trump-affiliated figures to coordinate with individuals connected to the Kremlin, and lays out more than enough evidence for Congress to conclude that Trump's efforts to bury such details constitute obstruction of justice.)

This "investigate-the-investigators" rallying cry is a key component of a delusional, Fox News-driven conspiracy theory in which President Barack Obama planted a secret spy within the Trump campaign in a desperate attempt to take down the then-Republican nominee. In testimony before a Senate appropriations subcommittee last month, Barr seemed to lend credibility to this story by refusing to rule out a retaliatory investigation. "I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal," he explained. "I'm not suggesting it wasn't adequately predicated. But I think I need to explore that."

The Department of Justice falls under the executive branch, but because its job is to enforce federal law in an evenhanded manner, presidents are supposed to allow attorneys general to operate independently of partisan interests. And Barr, for some reason, really struggled to provide a straightforward answer to Harris's questioning about what the White House had—or hadn't—suggested that he do.

HARRIS: Has the president or anyone at White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone? Yes or no please, sir. BARR: "The president or anybody else?" HARRIS: Seems you would remember something like that, and tell us. BARR: Yeah, but I’m trying to grapple with the word “suggest." There have been discussions of matters out there that they have not asked me to open an investigation. HARRIS: Perhaps they’ve "suggested"? BARR: I wouldn't say suggest. HARRIS: "Hinted"? BARR: I don't know. HARRIS: "Inferred"? You don't know? Okay.

If Harris had limited the scope of her question to "asked," Barr could have simply answered in the negative—assuming Trump has not made such an explicit ask. But as former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress earlier this year, commands in Trumpworld often take the form of winking insinuations, which everyone underneath the president understands for what they really are. Barr's stammering inability to answer Harris's broadly-phrased question suggests that even if Trump has not "ordered" his attorney general to take action, he has perhaps strongly implied that Barr should do so.

Next, Harris turned her attention to Barr's March 24 summary of the then-unreleased Mueller report. In it, she noted, Barr wrote that "after reviewing the special counsel's final report," he and then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein decided there was not enough "the evidence" to conclude that the president had obstructed justice. The distinction she highlighted, however, was that "the special counsel's final report" is not the same as the "evidence" underlying it—witness interview transcripts, emails, memos, and all the other primary source documents that informed Mueller's reasoning. Barr was forced to admit that Harris had a point: He had not, in fact, reviewed the evidence.

HARRIS: In reaching your conclusion, did you personally review all of the underlying evidence? BARR: No. We took— HARRIS: Did Mr. Rosenstein? BARR: No, we accepted the statements in the report as the factual record. We did not go underneath it to see whether or not they were accurate. We accepted it as accurate and made our— HARRIS: So you accepted the report as the evidence. BARR: Yes. HARRS: You did not question or look at the underlying evidence that supports the conclusions in the report? BARR: No. HARRIS: Did Mr. Rosenstein review the evidence that underlines and supports the conclusions in the report, to your knowledge? BARR: Not to my knowledge. We accepted the statements in the report and the characterization of the evidence as true. HARRIS: Did anyone in your executive office review the evidence supporting the report? BARR: No.

Barr went on to protest that within the Department of Justice—within any prosecutor's office, really—the higher-ups often make charging or declination calls based on summaries authored by underlings who have reviewed all the evidence. This is fair; forcing each decision-maker to re-examine every document would be wasteful and redundant, as Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney and as California's attorney general, knows perfectly well. But this is not a routine drug possession case. It is, as she put it, a choice about whether "the person who holds the highest office in the land...committed a crime." Her implicit argument, to Barr and to the American people, is that when the stakes are this high, the facts merit more careful, thorough scrutiny.

Thanks to Harris, we now know that the two senior administration officials who proclaimed Trump's innocence did so after examining as much of the evidence as you or me. These are the actions of people who are committed not to upholding the rule of law, but of protecting their president from its consequences.