MSNBC's Joe Scarborough bashed former attorney general William Barr for "lying through his teeth" about foreign election interference last year, and said he should have been charged with perjuring himself during congressional testimony.
A newly declassified intelligence report found Russia tried to undermine President Joe Biden's campaign ahead of the 2020 election, Iran tried to "undercut" Donald Trump's re-election bid and China did not engage in efforts to interfere — but that's not what the previous administration told Americans.
"The lying and politicization of intel was just breathtakingly dangerous," Scarborough said. "You have Bill Barr, [national security adviser Robert] O'Brien and [director of national intelligence John] Ratcliffe who all lied and said — this is Ratcliffe pre-election, quote, 'China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign.' He knew that was a lie, O'Brien knew that was a lie. Barr said, 'Oh, I looked at the intelligence,' and he lied through his teeth."
"The attorney general of the United States, going out of his way to lie through his teeth about intel, all for political purposes, all for political purposes," Scarborough added, "and now we find out this week that not only were they being liars at the time, but you had people in the intel community who were nervous about the fact that they were going to use their work, go out, twist it out of its proper context, and start spreading lies for Donald Trump's re-election campaign — and that's what the attorney general and the head of the intel community and trump's national security adviser, all three, did. Deeply shameful, deeply dangerous."
Scarborough still doesn't understand why Barr never paid a price for lying to Congress and the public about a number of matters.
"He took the Mueller report, in the words of William Rehnquist, he wrenched their words from their proper context, he lied in front of the House and the Senate, committed perjury," Scarborough said. "I never really figured out why they didn't try to charge him for that."
Scarborough said all of that made Barr the worst attorney general to ever serve.
"He claims to have seen intelligence and lied about it, spread lies about what the intel community had found along with Ratcliffe and O'Brien, saying that China was basically trying to do the same thing that Russia was doing," Scarborough said. "We found out that Iran was doing it. Why did they feel like they had to lie about China? Here's Bill Barr, again, Bill Barr again showing why he's the worst attorney general ever. John Mitchell looks like Atticus Finch compared to Bill Barr."
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