NadlerBarr
© Alex Wong/Getty Images/KJNHouse Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler • US AG Bill Barr
Anyone who does not believe that every member of the current Democratic contingent assigned to the House Judiciary Committee has not lost his or her mind and reason and become an angry, violent, and raving Jacobin bully should watch the hearing conducted Tuesday by that Committee with Attorney General William Barr. Reference to the Mad Queen in Alice in Wonderland might also serve as an aid to understanding the proceedings.

Enraged questions were hurled with almost visible curled lips and, when the Attorney General attempted to answer, he was immediately cut off, with angry retorts to the effect that his attempt to answer had invaded the questioner's "time." This spectacle went on for hours, with Republicans yielding time so that the Attorney General could answer the questions posed. Toward the end of the day, Chairman Jerry Nadler even imperiously denied the Attorney General of the United States a bathroom break. It appeared to be the verbal version of a riot, with words intended to be fashioned as Molotov cocktails by the esteemed members of the House.

In his written testimony, Barr noted the actual cause of this mental disorder in his Democratic inquisitors:
"Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus 'Russiagate' scandal, many of the Democrats on the Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up the narrative that I am simply the President's factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions."
Nadler laid out the Democrats' attack points in his opening statement. According to Nadler, the Attorney General is Donald Trump's fixer and is illegally investigating Russiagate to protect the President, and has "deployed the military and federal troops" to violently attack peaceful protesters, while giving short shrift to ending the systemic racism in the United States. He is also using an illicit law and order campaign to coverup and divert from the simple fact that every death from COVID 19 is Donald Trump's responsibility. The other major area of contention was the proposal to conduct the 2020 election by mail in ballot, which the Attorney General said would increase the probability of fraud. All of the Democrats railed and frothed at the patient and remarkably calm Attorney General, using variations of Nadler's script.

Representative Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the Committee came out swinging in response to the wholesale attack on Barr in Chairman Jerry Nadler's opening statement, playing a video of mainstream media, across the board, referring to every protester as peaceful while showing actual scenes from Washington, D.C. and Portland. Jordan's video showed black garbed protesters throwing bricks at cops, setting fires, throwing kerosene bombs and commercial grade firecrackers, attempting to tear down the fence around the federal courthouse in Portland, aiming lasers at cops faces, and jumping on top of and smashing police cars and setting them on fire. Barr confirmed that the protests in Washington, D.C. had become so violent that the President was moved to the basement of the White House by the Secret Service.

Barr repeatedly emphasized that the federal presence in Portland was the result of 61 consecutive days of attacks on the federal courthouse there. The deployment involves a limited number of U.S. Marshalls and has recently included a tactical component as the attacks have become more intense, largely as the result of Democratic Party orchestrated statements to the media that Barr and Trump are deploying "storm troopers." He detailed numerous injuries both to the federal officers in Portland and the Secret Service in Washington. Exasperated by the continuous characterization of Antifa as peaceful protesters, the Attorney General was forced to ask, "Since when is it okay to burn down the federal courthouse? Is that okay, now?"

Typical of the exchanges were those concerning Roger Stone. As Barr has done repeatedly, he defended the Stone prosecution as just, but even that proposition, with which this writer disagrees, hardly quieted the frothing Democratic majority. He then noted,
"This is a 67 year old man, first time offender, no violence, they were trying to put him in jail for seven to nine years. I was not going to advocate for that. That is not the rule of law."
Barr went on to point out that Judge Amy Berman Jackson actually agreed with him that the Mueller prosecutors' sentencing recommendation was over the top, but his inquisitors shouted him down. The constant proposing of angry questions and strutting, without the possibility of the Attorney General answering them, led Barr to note, sardonically, "I thought this was a hearing when the witness was supposed to be heard."