The Young Turks - William Barr Has MELTDOWN During Testimony

Episode Date: May 2, 2019

William Barr was not prepared for questions the Democrats were asking him. Cenk Uygur, Ramesh Srinivasan, and Brooke Thomas, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with the TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you'll open select small business banking products.

Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit TD.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. If you like the Young Turks podcast, I think you'll love a lot of the podcasts on the TYT Network. Old school, it's one of my favorites, one of the favorites for a lot of the listeners. Please check that out, subscribe, share it. That makes a big difference and give it a five-star rating.

Thank you. All right, welcome to the Young Turks, a fascinating different crews for you guys throughout this week since Anna is out. So today, Jank Hugo, Brooke Thomas, and Ramesh joins us again. Sir Navasana, if you guys remember, it's been on several times. Remesh, good to have you on the panel, I like it, yes. To see you, Brooke. So we got a lot of stories for you guys.

We obviously have the bar testimony and the Mueller letter, we're gonna start with that in a second. But then we also have Venezuela and the coup, and yes, it's definitely a coup that's happening over there and our participation. Are we actually going to go to war with Venezuela? One expert says that it would be far bloodier than Iraq. So there's huge stakes here, a giant, giant story in that sense. And then apparently Wall Street is a little afraid that a progressive might become president. Yeah, I love that.

And if you're wondering, the new shirt I'm wondering, well, I'm glad you asked, Too Strong, Ilhan. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that. Okay, you want to go by too strong, okay. Everybody's complaining she's too strong like Ty-YT. I love it, I love it. That's awesome. So shopty-t.com.

I've got more shirts to show for you later throughout the show, it'll be fun. All right, Brooke, let's get started. All right, let's do it. Okay, so starting off this afternoon. And the Justice Department is now admitting special counsel Robert Mueller was frustrated with Attorney General William Barr's four page summary of his report. And this comes after a letter Mueller wrote to Barr after his four page summary was released. That letter was leaked to the Washington Post.

Okay, here is what Mueller said because the post actually printed that letter today. The summary letter, the department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24th did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed the special counsel to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. Now, also in that letter, Mueller asked Barr to release the introductions and executive summaries from his report.

Here's that part. Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and department policies. I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation. Now, Barr ended up calling Mueller after he got the letter, and the Justice Department's

spokeswoman described that call as cordial and professional, and said Mueller emphasized, excuse me, that nothing in the Attorney General's March 24th letter was inaccurate or misleading. So that's a good moment to jump in. So there are a couple of layers to this story. One is why is the letter coming out now, and this is where we can give you context that almost no other media organization will. And then we'll go to the substance. And honestly, the naivete of Robert Mueller and some of the professionals and progressives

in Washington. That goes to the core of the story. So first on the timing, this is leaked not by Mueller's team, it's leaked by Barr's team. Now it's against Barr. Mueller basically yelling at Barr saying, why are you misleading the American public about our report? So why is Barr releasing it?

Because he's about to testify in Congress. So what they're doing is they're leaking something negative about them that is about to come out the next day anyway with a positive spin. So they give it to the press, and the press dutifully reports that, oh, yes, so Barr and Mueller were in talks the whole time, and in fact, Mueller called him afterwards and said, you know what, your summary was totally accurate. You know, I was just, you know, wanted our summaries released as well. It gives a positive spin to it.

It is not at all positive. The number one issue for Barr at this point is he lied to Congress. When he came to Congress in front of Congress in April, he said that he did not know that of any concerns the Mueller team had with his summary. Now that's obviously not true because there's this letter where they say, we're deeply concerned about your summary of our findings, that's not a real summary and it misrepresents what we said. That is a clear perjury, which is a crime.

I know we don't do anything about crimes anymore if you're powerful in the Trump administration. So Barr's in a lot of trouble. So he leaks this with a positive spin because he knows the Democratic Senate. Senator already hasn't and he's going to ask some questions about it tomorrow and Leahy did ask him questions about it today. So that's why they released this letter. Now, yes. Can I just, because before I forget, I like that you point that out because everyone's talking

about the letter. This is what's in the letter. Tell us about that, well, you know what? We called after we got the letter and it was cordial and nice. And ironically, the only thing that we don't have record of is the positive stuff that he's saying happened. Oh, by the way, that's a great point. I want you guys to understand, Barr is a proven liar and he's an obvious hatchet man

for Trump and totally misrepresenting the findings and then lied about it in front of Congress. So when he tells you that him and Mueller had a perfectly lovely, cordial conversation without Mueller backing that up, this recent history shows you, no, he often lies about what Mueller said or what Mueller wrote. So I wouldn't believe that for a second. So now the substance of it, so you've got the- The fact that Barr might be in legal jeopardy, but go to the letter. Look, Mueller's report had 10 different instances saying he obstructed justice, he obstructed

justice, he obstructed justice. Now the only reason why they didn't say, okay, let's indict him is because Mueller clearly says, according to their longstanding Justice Department policy, you cannot indict a sitting president. That doesn't mean he didn't do it. In fact, in the report, it says this does not. not exonerate him and that Congress should act. So that's a very troubling part. But Mueller was so naive, he gives the report to Barr and thinks that the attorney general

is going to release his summaries that are in the report and the introduction. And Barr goes, idiot, you trusted me? I'm not going to release your summary, I'm going to release my summary. And in my summary, I'm going to misrepresent your summary. And Mueller appears to be through the letter, genuinely shocked and chagrined. But this is the problem with both progressives and professionals in Washington. They're trying to play an honest game, like, oh, okay, well, I did a 448-page report, and I give it to you, the Attorney General is going to turn that in.

Now he's not, if you don't tell him, you must do, release the summaries and the conclusions of the introductions, he's not going to do it. He trusted Barr, that's crazy. But he's trusted all these guys. He trusted John Dowd, who was Trump's attorney before through most of this process. And you know what John Dowd did? Now he's not Giuliani. Giuliani's total political hatchet, man.

He's now Trump's attorney. But Dowd was supposed to be one of Mueller's colleagues. Like, oh, Bill Barr, I've worked with him. He's a colleague. No, your colleagues, they're out to screw you. And so Dowd then turned around after the Mueller report was released and said, oh, you. Mueller and his team are, quote, a bunch of babies. What happened to colleague?

They shived you right there. And Mueller thought, oh, no doubt will be honest and Barr will be honest. What planet do you live on? These are Republicans. And part of it is Mueller is a lifelong Republican. And so it's not to say he's biased, it's just that he grew up in a time when Republicans and Democrats would have honest debates. Now, I don't know honest debates, all there is is politics.

And so he got totally taken for a ride here. And now he's aggrieved about it, but he didn't count the politics in, which is unbelievable. So one more thing, guys, before the other gentleman, there's two parts of the politics he didn't take into account. How much the Trump team would lie about his report and how weak the Democrats are? He thought, well, I just gave you 10 cases of structure of justice, and I said Congress should do something about it. Because the Department of Justice technically cannot do anything with a sitting president.

And Nancy Pelosi goes, oh yeah, but I like raising money from Donald Trump. Oh, he's such a bad guy, give me money. I don't want to impeach him. So I don't care what you think the law is. You thought I was in the opposition? No, I'm not gonna resist them, I'm not gonna do impeachment. So Mueller's sitting there going, oh my God, I can't believe the Trump people lied, and I can't believe the Democrats are weak.

I mean, you want to talk about naive. Well, it's actually stunning to me that the introduction and the executive summary of this report has not actually come out. Because in our world, we're not necessarily all people who read hundreds of pages long reports that are full of jargon and so on. We often read the introduction and the executive summary. So what's the point of creating an alternative summary to the actual summary? Obviously it's misleading despite what Mueller says, right?

And was Mueller, was he naive or irresponsible? Well, look, you can make the case both ways, but I think the report is really straight up. And I say that with, you know, against both sides. So the Trump at first says total exoneration is when they're lying and pretending the Mueller report completely cleared him, because they thought they're gonna have about a month of being able to lie about it, which would then set into everybody's mind that it exonerated them until they released a report, which says we did not exonerate him.

And that political trick largely worked. But when the Mueller report actually comes out, and it does not exonerate him, it clearly indicates he broke a law and obstruction of justice, a very serious law, felony, then Trump comes out and goes, witch hunt, you're back to witch hunt. Which one is it, exoneration or witch hunt? But Mueller did actually look at the facts and say, look, he appears to have done obstruction of justice, but he didn't do collusion. So that's not biased, it's not a witch hunt against Donald Trump.

So it's definitely not on the Democrat side, but it's also not on the Republican side because he's like, look, it's clear as day he did obstruction of justice. He did what he was supposed to do with one super notable exception. But I'll get to that in this. Yeah, I do want to make the point though that Trump benefits a lot from the mainstream media and mainstream politicians, establishment politicians, obsession with the smaller report, because it allows him to rile up his base, it allows this to become a spectacle where the office of the presidency is somehow being attacked.

And it allows him to sort of legitimate this. This is why Chomsky actually made the points that this is a great gift to Trump, the mainstream media's obsession with the Mueller report. So no, my only reason is not because there aren't quite likely legitimate crimes that should be investigated, but because there are many, many issues that exist right now politically in our country that Trump has full throttle supported that 70, 80% of the country actually is completely against. I'm glad that you guys cover this more than anyone else.

Yeah, so that goes to the point we made earlier about how to cover this and Elizabeth Warren's reaction in particular. So people keep saying you can't cover, you know, the Mueller report and impeachment and the policy issues at the same time. Why not? We do a three hour show here and we cover all of it and we're gonna cover really important policies like Venezuela and the presidential candidacy later in the show. Part of the mindset is because cable news stations are so maniacally for the way.

focused on whatever they think the hot issue is. So they're like, oh, well, if they're hot issues, the Mueller report, then even though we have 24 hours to fill on our station, all 24 hours will be about the Mueller report. Well, yeah, if you have a media environment like that, then you have an issue. Because it's the spectacle of eyeballs, right? That's the logic by which establishment media functions. So whatever can get people's attention rather than what they actually care about and vote about is what the establishment media fuels itself on.

And so when I mentioned earlier, we're gonna give you a coverage here about why this letter was released that no other media is gonna give you. It's because the media play this game. They want the leaks so they don't tell you that they're leaking the story to them to give it a positive spin. In fact, they provide the positive spin. That's the exchange that they're doing. You give me the story, I get to have an exclusive, and in return, I'll spin it to your favor.

Now, they're not gonna admit that. And the rest of the media is not gonna admit that because they do it at different times. We don't play that game so we can tell you why it's happening in the way that you see. And so Elizabeth Warren, when asked about this in the town hall, said, yeah, I think on principle, we cannot allow the president to break the law and we should impeach. At the same time, here is my incredibly detailed policy proposals. So let's get rid of student debt, let's do green new deal, et cetera. So you can do both if you choose to.

It's just like cable news and a lot of the media chooses not to do it. And so one last thing that I promised you guys, and that's the thing that Mueller left out. So the one part that I would blame him on is, and I know why he did it, and it's not because he's a bad guy or has bad intent or is sloppy, he's just very by the book. So they said investigate the election, he investigated the election. But in order to see if you, Trump has ties to Russia, if you think he didn't collude during the election, I agree with his analysis on that, right? We're not biased.

I look at it and I go, okay, he makes a compelling case. He didn't collude during the election. But why did Trump obstruct? I mean, did it not occur to you that this guy's in a panic, obstructs 10 different times, tries to fire the prosecutor and lies about it? And so why did he do that if he didn't do collusion during election? It's obviously because of his business ties to Russia. And Mueller being by the book guy was like, nope, I'm not gonna look at the business ties.

During the election, so could that influence Trump? Of course! You have textbook money laundering. In plain view, 63 Russian billionaires buy Trump properties. They do not make money on the properties and a lot of them they lose money. Now that is classic money laundering. You don't mind losing the money because you're washing the money and getting it out of your country. So if you don't look into that, you didn't establish motive for his obstruction.

And so then Barr turns around and goes, ha ha, idiot, you didn't look into why he might have obstructed. So I'm going to say that he was completely innocent of the charge. And the only reason he wanted to stop the investigation was because he knew how innocent he was. Is that how normal people act? Of course not. But since Mueller didn't look into the business ties. And by the way, a lot of Trump's defenders on the left said, oh no, no, Mueller is a professional, and he will definitely look into his business ties. Can I get an admission, you guys were totally wrong?

He did not look into his business ties. And so look, and that is driving me crazy. I'm gonna start a different petition on that. Will someone, Southern District, New York State Attorney General, look into money laundering. We can all see it with our own eyes. But that's my opinion, you can't rely on my opinion, they actually have to get the evidence and do an investigation. And there's nothing stopping you don't have an excuse.

We gotta talk about Green New Deal, Medicare for on all these things. things. But if you're a prosecutor in New York, that's your job. And it's an incredibly important one. Please look into it. Okay, we got to take a break, right? Okay. And I'm, ah, too strong. Okay, all right. So now Barr goes to Congress. When we come back, we're going to show you his testimony and try to figure out how much trouble he's in. We'll be right. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The-Republic, or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom.

In each episode of Un-F-The Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were

taught in school. For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained

all at the same time. All right, back on a young Turks. By the way, late on the program, I am going to interview a conservative about William Barr's testimony and the Mueller letter, so that should be very interesting. So that's in the third out of the Young Turks. Don't miss it if you can't catch any part of the show live, don't worry, you can become a member, get all of it anytime you want. And now, or, well, actually, we're not ready for that announcement yet.

But soon there's going to be a great feature related to that. One feature that's already ready is you could pause the show wherever you want and when you come back to any device, it'll pick up where you left up. A lot of you ask for that and we deliver that for you. So our engineers are working on all this stuff and they're great. So t.t.com slash join to become a member and get all this programming. Now let me go to some comments here. Gabby Marita says, so the guy who auditioned for his job by saying he will mislead the public

ended up misleading the public, if only we could have seen this coming. And so a lot of Democrats were like, well, he has a good reputation, blah, blah, blah, no, he wrote a letter out of nowhere when he was a private attorney, having nothing new with the government, to the government saying, I would like to mislead the public on behalf of Donald Trump. That's why he got the job, this is not complicated. Cognosco, this says, Mueller is like the opposite of a smart person. I actually don't agree.

I think Mueller is perfectly smart. He's just, a lot of smart people have blind spots, and he's good investigator, he's a good prosecutor, FBI director, et cetera, but he's not a political guy. So he, but most of Washington has no idea what kind of politics is being played. They're like, oh, what, you know, I wonder what the senator from Alabama thinks. You know, I've gone over this a million times. They don't take a goddamn thing, they're just catching the checks. And so he's not the only one, 98% of Washington misunderstands politics.

So Eric Rooney says, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump winds up pulling a Nixon and resigning with Pence pardoning him. Well, you know that's been my theory from day one. So let's see how that goes. Judge says, these are all from our member section, by the way. He didn't say there was no collusion. He laid out numerous instances of it. They just weren't enough to build a criminal case.

Judge, that's fair. But on the other hand, he seemed to clearly indicate that he didn't think he should be charged on collusion. As opposed to obstruction, where it seemed pretty clear that he thought he'd think. thought he should be charged on obstruction. He just couldn't do it, Congress needed to do it since he's the president. So, and I think that Mueller was largely right about that, even on the things that, on the conclusion that he could not be charged on collusion.

That's my opinion. Last one's from Twitter. Mo for America says, watch Jenk rocking an Ilhan Omar shirt on the young Turks, I want one too. Well, thank you for saying that, it's right here. And I got to puff out my chest so it looks good. TopTyT.com is where you get it, although that's in the way. Okay, and by the way, we have a bunch of other shirts I want to show you as well.

So they all came out just now. We got Marguana, okay, that's our mascot. And so that's also shopty.t.com. Look at this, all of a sudden, a green new deal. Hello, the TYT in there. So pretty. Very nice. There you go.

And then one last one. By the way, this is all from our audience. They're fantastic. And this is not waste management, and you've got plastics inside of sea creatures, et cetera, all on shopty.com. And we'll put up the names of the folks if you're watching this later on YouTube or Facebook who designed the shirts. They're fantastic.

We really appreciate it. They're you guys. That's how we do this show together. So shopty. com. Okay. Brooke, what's next? All right.

A.G. Barr did testify before Congress this morning for the first time since the Mueller report was released. And now that Congress has the letter Mueller wrote to Barr, they have questions, as you can imagine. So watch how Barr responds when that letter is read out loud. From Bob Mueller. The summary letter the department sent to Congress and released a public late in the afternoon, March 24th, did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of the office's work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the department on the morning on March 25th. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed

the special counsel to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. I talked directly to Bob, and Bob told me that he did not have objections to the accuracy. Attorneys don't put things in writing unless they're pretty serious about them. There's an old rule in politics. A good politician doesn't write. letter and doesn't throw one away. So I've got to ask you, if he puts it in writing of his concerns or your representations on March 24th, you couldn't recall that when Congressman Chris asked you that question a few days later?

No, I'm saying that this was, the March 24th letter stated that Bob Mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. And when I talked to this special counsel about the letter, he said, he, you know, he, you My understanding was his concern was not the accuracy of the statement of the findings in my letter, but that he wanted more out there to provide additional context to explain his reasoning on why he didn't reach a decision on obstruction. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. So Durbin with excellent line of questioning there. And earlier, when he came in front of Congress, Bill Barr, clear.

said that he was unaware of any concerns from Mueller's team about how he summarized their actions. But we now know, he was clearly aware. There was a very detailed and strongly worded letter written to Barr himself that he was aware of and then made a call to Robert Mueller to about the letter where he said, Mueller's team said, we are deeply concerned about how you summarized our report. So when he came to Congress and said, I'm unaware. of any of their concerns, 100% lie, clear, demonstrable lie.

That is perjury, a felony, and I believe that the Republicans are on the record for saying perjury is an impeachable offense. They obviously said that about Bill Clinton, so I assume they're all going to agree that William Barr should immediately be removed from office. Oh right, they didn't, instead they spent the whole hearings talking about Hillary Clinton, and I'm not kidding. Let me go to the next video? Yeah.

Here in this next video, Barr can't remember if he discussed any ongoing criminal cases with anyone in the White House. Have you had any conversations with anyone in the White House about those ongoing investigations that were spawned or spun off by, I don't recall having any substantive discussion on the investigation? Have you had any non-substative discussion? I mean, it's possible that a name of a case was mentioned. And have you provided information about any of those ongoing investigation?

Any information whatsoever? I don't recall, no. You don't recall? I don't recall providing any. Wouldn't you recall about whether you gave information to somebody in the White House about an ongoing criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of New York or the Eastern District of Virginia or the Department of Justice? Yeah, I mean, I just don't recall providing any substantive information about a case.

You can't recall whether you have discussed those cases with anyone in the White House, including the President of the United States. My recollection is I have not discussed those. I mean, it's just incredible how this is like sort of a stalling, playing the long game, you know, icing the kicker type of thing that's going on here. Obviously, we have him on the record, as you just said, being factually incorrect, you know, with the earlier statements that, you know, there was no interaction. But I think it's quite clear here that the goal is to have his findings, supposed findings,

his summaries, be what the public understands, bore the heck out of us the rest of the time, and Trump will use it as political ammunition to divide and conquer. Yeah, and here he is, now, since he got caught lying earlier to Congress, he's trying to be careful. What do lawyers do when they're trying to be careful? I don't recall. Now, how are you going to disprove I don't recall? If he says, no, I didn't tell them anything about other cases or this case, well, he's lying. Of course he did.

That's why he's saying, I don't recall. These events didn't happen a couple of years ago. They just happened. This is all in the last couple of months. And wait, you went and talked to Donald Trump at the White House about cases that affect Donald Trump, and you don't recall that? I mean, then we've got a whole other issue about whether you can hold down any job, let alone attorney general.

That would be very important when you go talk to the president about cases he might be involved in. That's not a thing that you, that slips your mind a couple of days later. No, he's saying I don't recall because he clearly talked to the White House and doesn't want to get caught lying again. This is a White House where the boundaries between the White House itself as an institution And anyone outside are very porous. It's unclear where, you know, who's going in, who's going out.

And the key response that we see across the board over the last two and a half years has been, I don't recall. Yeah, and look, the MAGA guys know he's lying too. Because they can, you know, you can yell a shout about anything else, but you hate politicians too. And that's a political answer and you know it. You know he didn't forget. Like the only defense you got is, so what, they talked about it, so what? Okay, but admit that he's not telling the truth, but he says, oh, golly gee, did we talk

about cases related to Trump with Trump a couple of days ago? I can't recall. I mean, how many times has Giuliani himself actually sort of said, I can't recall about various things, right? Yes. He actually may be forgetting. Yeah, we have no idea what's going on to right. Giuliani said.

That's what's true. Just kidding. But, all right, so of course, Senator Kamala Harris got a lot of attention on social media after her questions to Barr. It started with her asking Barr a yes or no question. And just as you saw in the videos we just showed you, he stumbled on this, too. Yes or no question. Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?

I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Yes or no? Could you repeat that question? I will repeat it. Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone? Yes or no, please, sir. The president or anybody else? Seems you would remember something like that and be able to tell us.

Yeah, but I'm trying to grapple with the word suggest. I mean, there have been discussions of matters out there that they have not asked me to open an investigation. Perhaps they've suggested? I don't know, I wouldn't say suggest. Hinted? I don't know. Inferred. You don't know.

Okay, she got him. I mean, that was great. I mean, she got him so bad that she, of course, realized that she's, of course, a prosecutor. So she got up like this, like, okay, hold up, no, I didn't know he was going to be this bad. Hovering over the prey. Yeah. So then Cory Booker, who's running for president against Kamala Harris, is in the background going like, oh man, she got him.

He's like trying to hold in a smile the whole time, like, dang, you're good. Yeah, so again, it doesn't matter if your left wing in the middle of right wing. You saw what just happened there. Clearly Trump went and told him, yeah, go investigate my political enemies and lock them up. I mean, was that a suggestion? I don't know if I'm struggling with the word suggest. Right, we should be, we should like have a running list of, like, examples of how maybe he shouldn't hold down any job. Yes.

So I'm, this is number two for the day. I'm grappling with the word suggest. What? You remember how much the Republicans were like, can you believe that Bill Clinton question what the word is, is? Now they're like, well, of course, we're all grappling with the word suggest. We're trying to figure out what she meant by suggest. We're grappling with it. But the best part's not the grapple.

The best part is like the confused stutter for so long. Like, well, what? I mean, he almost looked like Herman Kaine there, Libya. Libya. I love Libya. All right, we've got more with Senator Harris, because he or she actually gets Barr to admit he essentially did no work of his own before deciding. there was no obstruction of justice.

In reaching your conclusion, did you personally review all of the underlying evidence? No, we took and accepted... Mr. Rosenstein? No. We accepted the statements in the report as the factual record. You did not question or look at the underlying evidence that supports the conclusions in the report. No. Did Mr. Rosenstein review the evidence?

the evidence that underlines and supports the conclusions and the report. To your knowledge. Not to my knowledge. Did anyone in your executive office review the evidence supporting the report? No.

No. Yet you represented to the American public that the evidence was not quote sufficient to support an obstruction of justice. Yeah, you know, this one is not as good or got you To be honest, in my opinion, because she's saying, okay, you didn't review the evidence,

and now he's the attorney general and he concluded that he should not be tried charged with obstruction of justice. So I get it, it's fair to say, hey, you should have looked at the underlying evidence, not just looked at the Mueller report. What Barr is saying is, even if all the things that Mueller said are true, I still would have cleared Trump. And by the way, if he looked at the underlying evidence, he still would have cleared Trump Right, that's true.

He wrote a memo saying, I can't wait to clear Trump. That's why he became attorney general, right? So, but still, like, I get what Barr is saying in this case, even if everything that Mueller says about the 10 different things that Donald Trump did to obstruct justice are true, I still don't think it's enough evidence to obstructing. Now, of course, I don't agree with that, but that's his claim and why he didn't bother looking into the underlying evidence. We have more on that too.

Okay. Yeah, no, I was just gonna say there, the more, and you guys are doing a great job of this, but I think the more just all of these, you know, mishaps and examples of incompetency and obvious forms of corruption are just revealed to the public. That I think is gonna be the staying point out of this whole mess, out of this whole Russia, potential collusion, obstruction of justice. I think that just has to be part of a campaign against Trump and exposing all the horrible, horrible things that Trump has done to working class people.

Let's say there's more of that interaction with Senator Harris. As the Attorney General of the United States, you run the United States Department of Justice. If in any U.S. Attorney's Office around the country, the head of that office, when being asked to make a critical decision about, in this case, the person who holds the highest office in the land, and whether or not that person committed a crime, would you accept them recommending a charging decision to you if they had not reviewed the evidence. Well, that's a question for Bob Mueller. He's the U.S. attorney.

He's the one who presents the report. But it was you who made the charging decision, sir. You made the decision not to charge the president. In a prox memo and in a declination memo. You said it was your baby. What did you mean by that? It was my baby to let to decide whether or not to disclose it to the public. See, there she connects the second dot, and now it's a lot better case.

Still, if I'm looking at it from a, like keeping it real lens rather than a legal lens, we know what happened, and we know that he was never going to charge Trump, no matter what the evidence said. But what Kamala Harris clearly did to him again, that's why he went, B, B, B, B, B, B, is that she said, now, if you're the person who gets to decide whether he's charged or not, And that is what Barr claimed in his original letter. Hey, he didn't give it to Congress, that's not true, he did give it to Congress, he gave the discretion to me, and I'm gonna decide not to charge Trump on obstruction, even though

Mueller says there's 10 cases where he obstructed justice. So then she says, well, if you made it, not Mueller, you made the decision not to charge Donald Trump, did you look at the underlying evidence? No, I didn't. If anybody has a decision under you, a U.S. attorney, and they have the capability to charge someone, would you ask them if they looked at the underlying evidence? Yes. So why didn't you do likewise?

And we all know the answer, because he was going to clear Trump no matter what. And we've got one last video for you. So here, Barr defends Trump wanting Mueller out during the investigation, if you'll remember. And he says his reasoning is because it's not a crime to want someone removed. because there's a conflict. But watch what happens when he's asked to explain what that conflict is. And there is a distinction between saying to someone, go fire him, go fire Mueller, and saying have him removed based on conflict.

And what would they have different results? What would that conflict be? Well, the difference between them is if you remove someone for a conflict of interest, then there would be another, presumably another person appointed. Yeah, but wouldn't you have to have? have it in this kind of situation, an identifiable conflict that made sense, or else doesn't it just become a fabrication? Well, this, now we're gonna shift from the issue of writing the memo.

Yeah, he is not a good witness. Which is wild. Like it's here. Yeah. Yeah. No, the whole day was embarrassing. So look, this is a quick story. Actually, let's just- Update, yeah.

Yeah, update. So he's supposed to come back tomorrow. And essentially he's looking, they're in a battle. He's been in a dispute with the committee over plans. They want to have a council, I'm looking at the wrong camera, question him tomorrow. And he's saying, no, he doesn't want that. And so right now Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are discussing holding AG Barr in contempt of Congress, and that's according to several lawmakers and officials familiar with the plan.

And they're also saying Barr has until the end of the day to hand over the full Mueller report. he is not expected to comply. So they want counsel to question him alongside, and he's saying if that's the rule, I'm not coming back. Yeah, so no, he's not coming back because of how it went today. Right, exactly. So he got his ass handed to him by the Senate. Now he'd go over to the House where the Republicans cannot protect him as much, because

the Democrats are on the House. He's like, I mean, if I got destroyed in the Senate, I'm going to get mauled in the House, so I'm not going. And again, the one piece of context here I just want to fill you in on is every Republican that went up and asked questions to Barr all talking about Hillary Clinton. Lindsey Graham, because the Republicans run the Senate, so they get to talk more on the Senate side. And they were all like, so this report about Donald Trump reminds me of Hillary Clinton.

Right. That's so weird. Yeah, really, really it does. That's interesting. So they tried to distract the whole day, and that was the entirety of their questions. Okay, we gotta take a quick break. We got Venezuela coming up. Super important story, are we going to war with Venezuela?

That's a real question, okay? And so we'll tell you the latest when we come. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech. And one of the best ways is with ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN hides your IP address, making your active ID more difficult to trace and sell the advertisers.

ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers and cybercriminals. And it's also easy to install. A single mouse click protects all your devices. But listen, guys, this is important. ExpressVPN is rated number one by CNET and Wired magazine. So take back control of your life online and secure your data with a top VPN solution available, ExpressVPN. And if you go to ExpressVPN.com slash TYT, you can get three extra months for free with this exclusive link just for TYT fans.

That's EX, P-R-E-S-S-V-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks. If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t-y-t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this. free second. All right, back on the Young Turks.

So we got a lot of great guests and hosts and events coming up for you guys. Peter Dow is going to join us tomorrow on the conversation. So that's the third hour of the Young Turks, one of the biggest critics to say the least of Bernie Sanders in 2016, and now coming on the Young Turks. So that ought to be very interesting, 8 o'clock Eastern. on Thursday. That's tomorrow. Today, later today.

Old school, the whole show is just for members and they get to watch it live. So tonight you'll see Mark Thompson, Brett Ehrlich, and Matt Walsh. He's one of the stars of Vice and many other shows. He was on the program before as a guest host. Now he's gonna come on old school and have a more relaxed fun conversation. That should be great. On Sunday live right after Game of Thrones, as we're doing every time on TYT.com, we're gonna I have a live review of Game of Thrones.

This is going to be episode four, and for the members, we do a special prediction series as well. And you can see how many deaths we got right on episode three, and then we got new predictions about who might or might not kill Searcy. But the review is free, and we take a long time with it. We delve into every scene and every character. So this weekend is going to be Ben, John, Brooke, and Brett. I look so happy.

I know, you're the only one who looks happy. Everybody else is trying to be in Westrose. They're like trying to do their Tyson Beckford, all three of them. Yeah, they're blue steel. Right. You know what they're trying to do? They're trying to do blue Valerian steel. There you go.

So the members only predictions and any show that you miss, t.yt.com, join or become a member for for free for a week and try it out at tyt.com slash trial. Okay, and the last one is tomorrow into a post game. That's the last half hour of the young Turks is normally for members, but we're opening it up to everybody because we're gonna review knock down the house. That's the movie about the rise of AOC and some of the other just Democratic women candidates and it won the award at Sundance for Best Movie in from the audience. And we're gonna show it to everyone, not the movie.

on Netflix. Please watch the movie if you can and then watch the review with us on Thursday. So the last half hour will be available to everybody at t.t.com and then we'll do a little extra as always for the members at t.t.com slash join. And part of that extra will be my point of view on what happened behind the scenes. Because the movie's all about what happened before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won, but I also have information that isn't in the movie. So I'll share that with the members.

So check out all that great programming. So I took a long time with that. So I just one quick, actually two quick reads here from the comment section, then we'll move on. Cray Cray, souffle, I mainly read it for the handle, said, I never believed that Bill the candy bar was going to be honest about what was in the Mueller report, impeach him, impeach them all ASAP. By the way, on Trump, we have a petition, t.yt.com slash imbors.

impeach. So if you want to do that, now that the Mueller report has come out in his second clear crime, which is obstruction on top of the campaign finance reform violations, t-y-t.com slash impeach. And I like the nickname because I like all nicknames except pooty poot. Anyway, Megan writes in, last one. Sorry, Jake, but I disagree with the we got him. It would take Dems being strong or Trump being upset to quote unquote get him.

Of course you're right. We got him means he's clearly lying and we can clearly tell. That doesn't mean we're gonna actually get him out of office, referring to attorney general bar. On that, of course you're right. Okay, let's go to the next door. All right, next step. A national security advisor, John Bolton, now still says all options are on the table regarding

U.S. military intervention into Venezuela. Take a look. We want as our principal objective, the peaceful transfer of power. But I will say again, as the president has said from the outset, and that Nicholas, Mr. and those supporting him, particularly those who are not Venezuelan should know, is all options are on the table. Right, and if you haven't been paying attention to this, here's what's going on. Opposition leader Juan Guido has called for the largest march in Venezuela's history. And on Tuesday, asked the military for their backing.

But the Armed Forces leadership has so far remained loyal to Maduro, who has been in power of court since 2013. And we also have a little of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the subject. The President has been crystal clear and incredibly consistent. Military action is possible. If that's what's required, that's what the United States will do. We're trying to do everything we can to avoid violence. We've asked all the parties involved not to engage in that kind of activity. We'd prefer a peaceful transition of government there where Maduro leaves and a new election is held.

But the President has made clear in the event that there comes a moment, all have to make decisions about when that moment is, and the president will ultimately have to make that decision. He's prepared to do that if that's what's required. So the country with the largest oil reserves in the world is Venezuela. And the other countries with large oil reserves in the world are Iran. You know, surprise, surprise that we're drumming the war beat with Iran. Iraq and Saudi Arabia, our best buddy. Think about the incredible hypocrisy that this represents not only in terms of potential support of oil reserves and control of oil reserves, but also what a boon this would be in true neocon playbook style to support

military contractors as well. So my main point here is you have to look at the incredible hypocrisy around how we conduct foreign policy and how we conduct militaristic behavior. This within a week or two of the time period when Trump vetoes a bipartisan resolution that went through both houses of Congress calling for an end to the inhumane, disastrous humanitarian crisis in Yemen, supported by Saudi Arabia. So I just want to put this in that context, and for us to understand that Trump's embrace of neocons is in direct contradiction with many of the things that he said on the campaign

trail about getting out of interventions and needless wars. This right here is America's playbook. This right here, but a version that happened, a bunch of versions that happened decades ago. That is exactly why all those people need help and want to be here now. So I just think it's just ironic that on one hand they're saying there's too many people needing asylum, asking for asylum, send them away. But also, hey, let's put another country in a position to be asking for those same things. Because we've done it before and we know exactly what it looks like.

We know exactly how to do it. We know what's gonna do to the people not in power who live there. So great points on all sides. So to Brooks point, Kevin Ivers, a Latin American expert said Venezuela would quote be far more difficult than Iraq. So let that sink in and said it would be quote a much bloodier conflict. So that has several implications. One is that well then we're gonna lose a lot of US troops if we're actually going to use

the military option, which you just heard is on the table. And so that's insanity. As Ramesh pointed out, wait, Trump, I thought he said he wasn't going to do interventions. I thought he said Iraq was a terrible idea. Now all of a sudden we're going to invade Venezuela? Like that's, I mean, I can't begin to describe how insane that is. And it, well, maybe it's because Maduro is so bad and all of a sudden we care so much about human rights.

Well, that's funny because Saudi Arabia has one of the worst human rights records on the I mean, the way they treat their own citizens is horrific, let alone if you're gay in Saudi Arabia, let alone if you're a woman in Saudi Arabia, let alone the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet, literally, that they've created in Yemen with hundreds of thousands of starving people and kids, they're starving them to death. And you're concerned about human rights in Venezuela. You should be concerned about human rights in Venezuela, but I don't believe you, because you're not at all concerned about human rights in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen. So it's an obvious lie. Well, is it just Maduro? And again, to Brooks' point about how many times have we done this in the land of America? Well, it turns out we tried to do it in 2002 in Venezuela to Hugo Chavez. So not just Maduro. No, we want the oil, we want the oil. John Bolton even went on Fox News and said, yes, in Venezuela we will look out for American

business interests and specifically American oil companies' interests. And remember what Trump said when he wrote on the campaign trail regarding Iraq, he said we should have taken the oil. So he's brazen, right? And so you have to understand him by his words. And you have to understand him also by his actions now when they contradict the words. I like when you, the way, like you said, it's not that people are saying don't care about people in other countries, but it's important to point out that that's not the motivation.

Because the USN care what's going on in the Congo. In the 90s, like this is still modern day. In the 90s, the US, the United States set back and let a million people die in Rwanda. In the 90s. So look, 100% right, Brooke. So when progressives say that we care about human rights, we have a track record of caring about human rights and saying that that should be part of our foreign policy interest. Whereas the Republicans say, nah, no, no, no, if we're gonna make business deals with China,

who cares that they've got concentration camps where they're holding Uighur Muslims? They're Muslims. Who cares? I gotta do business. Saudi Arabia. They give us cheap oil. They're murdering all those kids in Yemen. Who cares?

They chopped up a Washington Post columnist. Who cares? Then you're gonna tell me you care about human rights in Venezuela? Latinos who you say will can never come into this country because they're rapists and criminals? I mean, this is a goddamn joke, it's so obvious. How could anybody in the rest of the media take them seriously, but they do? That's why, look, I got to, I mean, it sounds self-aggrandizing, but it's true.

You need an outlet like this, because the rest of the media is in the tank, they report it like, oh, well, human rights, or you, in New York Times, human rights, Trump cares about human rights of Latinos. Are you kidding me? I mean, of course you should write the context. The context shows you that they do not remotely care about the human rights, and you should at least write in the stories. Bolton said on national TV, we're doing it for the goddamn oil, he said it.

And also note that there's a couple things going on. If you want to just keep it real, there was a large scale survey done over the last five years of people from many different countries in the world. You know what country was seen as the most risk to their welfare? It was the United States, right? So around the world, the United States is seen that way because of some of the actions we've taken throughout history. The US- Can I just, sorry, Brooke, just to hop on to that point.

Guys, look, that's why I'm so frustrated with the rest of the mainstream media, not just the Fox news is, but also the CNN's, the New York Times, the Washington Post, because we go along with these fictions, and we tell the American people, oh, the American government cares so much about doing the right thing. That's why we're looking to do interventions in only oil-rich countries. And in fact, when we say that, they're like, sounds like a conspiracy theory, just because we invaded or want to invade three out of the top war oil producing countries, you seem to think it's about the oil.

And of course it is about the oil. There's 80, there's 70 to 80 countries that have dictators in the country, in the world. We don't seem to care about them. Nobody's invading them, right? So, look, it's so obvious why we're doing it, but they won't write it. The rest of the media will not say it, and they will not write it, they treat it as if this is a legitimate issue where all of a sudden, John Bolton of all people cares about human rights. That's total lie. It is an absolute coup.

That doesn't mean Maduro is a good guy. That doesn't mean there aren't tremendous human rights problems in Venezuela. But it does mean that you should not trust the administration when they lie to your face. I mean, their lies are so brazen. Pompeo and Bolton go out there and Pompeo said, we're trying to do everything we can to avoid violence. At the same time, in the same paragraph that he's threatening war, that is not trying to do everything you can to not do violence. That is saying we will come and invade your country and murder your leaders.

That is not doing everything you can to not threaten violence and not do violence. Look, this is a coup, man. Wido has said grab your guns, grab your weapons, the military, turn your weapons against your colleagues. As much as the Maduro government is despicable, this is clearly a coup, coup, no answer Now you got to Bloomberg and other news outlets say, well, the Trump administration says we should call it an uprising. So we have decided to bow our heads and ignore obvious reality and call it an uprising

instead of a coup. That's why the media lives in alternative effects. One last thing guys from me, if they're so, if they're not at all concerned about the oil, then why doesn't why to do a pledge saying that if I take charge, I will not give any contracts to American oil companies. That will never happen. Well, that would give him a lot of credibility, wouldn't it? It would give him credibility with the people of Venezuela.

It would give him credibility in a lot of ways. Notice he hasn't said that and he ain't gonna say that because they're gonna give the contracts to American oil companies. And you know, it's so easy to point out the irony and compare this to so many other countries that the U.S. can't benefit from and just kind of turns. But just this, just you talking just reminded me, we did not get this same level of energy in our own country when New Orleans, Louisiana was underwater. We did not get this type of federal humanitarian care that they're claiming here.

When New Orleans was underwater, people were finding their grandparents floating around and poor people were stuck there. Like, do you know what? That's wild. Yeah. This. It's all about who your masters are, right? And the masters are these big corporations that have bought out our government, right?

And you all cover it better than anyone, you all keep it real. But just also understand how quickly and rhetorically we keep seeing again and again Venezuela described as somehow something similar on any level at all to the Bernie Sanders movement, right? And so understand the rhetoric also of this is a wartime president, wartime presidents are popular in this country, and by saying that this is socialism and that is socialism, there's a big confusion that's going on. People who want to protect our rights versus saying this is the enemy.

I mean, look, all right, I swear last this time. Sorry, I lied last time when I said I was going to make the last much. Seriously, look, two other points of incredible hypocrisy here. We say we're so concerned about meddling in other people's elections. I can't believe the Russians meddled in our elections by doing Facebook posts. No, I'm concerned about that. We're not hypocritical about it here at the Young Turks. But I think the severity of that is a little less than an invasion of Venezuela, because

we didn't like the way they conducted their elections. I would argue that that is when you roll in tanks, you've gone up the scale of meddling. And so yet has anybody in the media called out that obvious, blatant, unbelievable, record-breaking hypocrisy? Nope. And finally, to come all the way back around to what Brooks started with. So you're worried about immigrants coming into this country. You know what's going to happen if you start a bloody civil war in Venezuela?

of refugees are gonna pour into the rest of Latin America and eventually into America. And then Trump will turn around and go, they're sending the rapists in the criminals. Oh, come on. And then say, oh my God, I can't believe they're sending these Venezuelans. I hate them. That's why I had to invade them to save them. Which is, right. Nothing makes sense anymore.

There's no logic. Right. Yeah. No. All right. Oh my God, we're done. We're done. Oh no.

Oh no. And we didn't even get to the other story. Okay. part of why we do the last half hour for members and so t yt dot com slash join we'll cover some of the more of those stories remiss thank you for so much for being out really appreciate it so nice to me yes thank you for having me all right we'll be right back guys thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your

I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.