Late Night host Seth Meyers dedicated his “A Closer Look” segment Wednesday night to Wednesday’s testimony of Attorney General William Barr in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Barr, who was handpicked for the AG role by President Trump, had to answer for why his four-page summary of the Mueller Report “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report—this according to the office of Robert Mueller.
“So now we know that the guy who spent almost two years putting together a 448-page report about a criminal conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election complained that Trump’s handpicked attorney general misled the country about that report. That’s huge news,” explained Meyers. “And yet, when they had the chance to ask Barr about that news in a hearing today, Republican senators mostly acted like it didn’t happen.”
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One of those people was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Here’s the Mueller Report,” Graham said during Wednesday’s hearing, raising it high. “You can read it for yourself. It’s, uh, about 400-something pages. Can’t say I’ve read it all, but I’ve read most of it.”
“What do you mean you haven’t read it all? That was the assignment!” exclaimed Meyers. “Are you the guy who shows up to book club and says, ‘I’m really excited to talk about Moby Dick, but if we could just avoid any details about what happens to the whale, that’d be great. I didn’t get to the whale parts.’” (Plenty of senators, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have read the report in full.)
“So Graham admitted he hadn’t even read the whole report, and then he decided to spent the rest of his time harping not on Mueller but on the GOP’s favorite obsession: Hillary Clinton,” added Meyers.
Yes, Graham took it upon himself to read texts sent between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page concerning the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email server. In the texts, Agent Strzok called Trump “abysmal” and a “fucking idiot” in the spring of 2016, well before the former reality-TV host was elected president.
“I love that Graham thinks it’s an incredible gotcha to read a bunch of text messages from FBI officials calling [Trump] a disaster. I mean, look at him. If you saw him on the street and had no idea who he was, you’d say, ‘Man, that guy’s a disaster,’” joked Meyers.
Later on, the comedian expanded on how the Senate Republicans were “obsessing over somebody that wasn’t even in the room” instead of questioning the attorney general about the possibility that Trump may have committed obstruction of justice—airing a montage of Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, John Kennedy, and Lindsey Graham repeatedly invoking Clinton’s name, and the investigation into her emails, during the AG’s testimony.
“Oh my God, guys, let it go!” said Meyers. “A thousand years from now, when global warming has destroyed the planet and hordes of zombie bandits roam the countryside, a gang of survivors is going to find an abandoned room in the Capitol with these words scrawled in blood: What About Hillary’s Emails?”
