Democrats might not be so anxious to talk to Bill Barr for a while.
The attorney general faced down hours of pontificating liberals on Tuesday, stolidly slapping back efforts to smear both his own performance and the Trump administration while repeatedly taking the fight to Democrats intent on trying to put him on the defensive.
And when he was offered the chance to do a little pontificating of his own, he made the most of it.
The House Judiciary Committee hearing was chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, a viciously vindictive man whose history of personal and professional clashes with now-President Donald Trump goes back decades.
For the most part, the day was made up of a series of open attacks by Democratic lawmakers eager to score points with an avidly watching Twitter audience, but Barr stayed largely on the offensive.
For instance, Nadler tried to accuse Barr of orchestrating events like the deployment of federal agents to the United States courthouse in Portland, Oregon, just to arouse Trump’s political base, according to The Daily Wire.
But when Nadler turned a question over to Republican Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio, Barr took it to the Democrats — and their street thugs rioting in American cities — by asking questions every sane American can relate to.
Chabot set Barr up with a softball lob, asking the attorney general if it’s the Trump administration’s responsibility “to see that federal laws are upheld, and that federal property is secure and safe and protected. Is that correct?”
In his response, Barr noted that the federal government is responsible for enforcing federal law throughout the country — “every square foot of the country,” in fact. But then he got to the part about federal property, and that’s where the rubber hit the road.
Calling U.S. courthouses “the heart of federal property,” he said, “we have the obligation to protect federal courts, and the U.S. Marshals specifically have been given that obligation.”
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of current events knows that one particular piece of federal property, the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, has been under nightly siege by anarchists for going on two months now.
Trump’s decision to send federal agents to protect the courthouse in early July has become a flashpoint for liberal lawmakers who accuse him of fomenting unrest (apparently, they’re hoping Americans forget there was rioting before the federal agents were dispatched).
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