You could almost see Fox contributor Marc Thiessen rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the Trump administration teaming up with Attorney General William Barr to persecute non-Trump loyalists involved in the Russia investigation.
The discussion occurred in the evening after Barr’s Senate testimony. It was also one week after Fox’s senior judicial analyst, Andrew Napolitano, opined that the Mueller report revealed repeated instances of Donald Trump obstructing justice. Yet Special Report’s “All Star Panel” ignored Napolitano's analysis and offered no pushback when Thiessen all but yelled "witch hunt!"
Thiessen, of course, said Barr was "right not to" testify before the House Judiciary Committee the next day. "This was a Shakespearean drama and the title was 'Much Ado About Nothing,' " he sneered.
Then Thiessen delivered a diatribe that sounded like an audition for a job with the Fan in Chief.
THIESSEN: [Barr] has been completely open about this. He overrode DOJ regulations to release this report with very few redactions. He's given Congress a virtually unredacted copy of the report that they can review. He put out a short summary because he didn't want to leave the country in suspense while they went through the redaction process. And this is a complete non-issue except that the Democrats aren't trying to find anything because they didn't get the Russia collusion story, because it turns out the underlying crime didn't happen. And so they are having trouble letting go, and so they are trying to go after Bill Barr in this way.
[…]
The president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to steal the election. And the fact is, if you're Donald Trump, if any of you were out there, if you were accused of a crime you knew you didn't commit and somebody appointed a Special Counsel who spent two years and $25 million investigating you, you would be pretty ticked off. And you’d want to know how this started, how it happened, and why did we waste the American people's time and tax dollars.
First of all, Trump was never formally accused of a crime. Secondly, Mueller found a lot of extremely damning behavior by Trump despite not charging him with a crime. Nobody mentioned that.
Panelist Mara Liasson put up the only challenge. But she did not note Napolitano’s view or even that Barr didn’t bother to read the evidence underlying his charging decision – and that his overall summary was at odds with special counsel Robert Mueller. However, Liasson defended the investigation, saying, "Mueller was also tasked with explaining what the Russians did, which he did in great detail, and he did a great service to the country." She just forgot to mention the mountain of devastating information about Trump's behavior with the Russians that didn't rise to the level of a crime.
Although it’s not in the video below, Thiessen got the last word in the discussion. You don't need a video to hear the vengeful enjoyment. It comes through loud and clear in the transcript:
THIESSEN: We've been investigating Donald Trump for the collusion hoax for two years, and now we are going to find out how this got started. And it's going to start with the Obama administration. And it's -- if they think Donald Trump looked pretty bad from the Mueller report because of his cooperation, because he allowed McGahn to spend 30 hours with the Special Counsel, we're going to have the same thing happen on the other shoe on the other foot, now.
On Friday, Trump chatted for more than an hour with Vladimir Putin about the “Russian hoax” and other matters yet did nothing to deter Russia from meddling in the 2020 election. When asked if he told Mr. Putin not to meddle in the 2020 presidential election, Trump said, “We didn’t discuss that.”
But during this discussion, Thiessen accused Democrats of not doing enough to deter Russian interference: 'If Democrats were serious, they would say the president didn't do this, we should now get to the bottom of what Russia did and try to figure out a way to stop it from happening again," Thiessen lectured.
Memo to Thiessen: Maybe you should talk to Trump about trying to figure a way to stop the interference because his behavior was a big “Keep it coming!” signal to Russia.
Watch Fox’s premier news show mislead viewers about Trump’s anti-American behavior, below, from the May 1, 2019 Special Report.
Evidence of total innocence, right?