Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, launched a blistering verbal assault on the Trump Justice Department Friday, saying that it has been corrupted by the “moral dead zone” of the White House.
“You enter that dead zone and you end up with an attorney general who can’t even tell me that telling the White House counsel to lie is not okay,” Hirono said in an appearance on MSNBC. “He can’t answer that.”
Hirono generated one of the more dramatic moments of Attorney General William Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday when she ripped Barr for his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
“Mr. Barr, now the American people know that you’re no different than Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once-decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office,” she said during the hearing.
She was cut off by Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-SC., who accused her of “slandering” Barr.
.@maziehirono says the White House is “a moral dead zone.” pic.twitter.com/QEWXMX7f9b
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 3, 2019
Hirono’s comments Friday were in reference to a revelation in Mueller’s report that President Trump had directed White House counsel Don McGahn to lie to federal investigators, an instruction McGahn ignored.
It was one of 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice identified in the Mueller report, in which Trump made veiled threats, complained about press coverage of the investigation, and talked about either ending the investigation or pressuring aides to make his biggest political problem go away.
Democrats have seized on these moments as examples of obstruction of justice and have criticized Barr for determining no such obstruction occurred.
“So this is the president, once again, doing the two things that he cares about most: protecting himself, and money,” Hirono said.
The senator’s comments echoed a recent op-ed in the New York Times by former FBI Director James Comey, who wrote Trump’s selfishness was “eating the souls” of otherwise good officials, such as Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
“I agree with that,” Hirono said. “Anybody who disagrees with the president is out the door. All of the people around him can’t make decisions based on a moral compass because there is none. It’s all about protecting himself.”
