As the country faces a constitutional crisis thanks to Attorney General William Barr going full Trump puppet in the Roger Stone case, Sean Hannity is gaslighting this blatant corruption as an instance of “draining the swamp.”
Last night, the Hannity show mostly focused on a pro-Trump perspective of the Democratic New Hampshire primary. But Trump ‘s Bedtime BFF and unofficial chief of staff said this during his opening comments:
HANNITY: We have major breaking news from the swamp. Huge story. After federal prosecutors requested an insane nine-year sentence for Roger Stone, the DOJ has now stepped in, rightfully so. In just a few minutes, we will address the disgusting two-tier justice system and four prosecutors have resigned in just the last few hours.
As The Washington Post explains, four federal prosecutors quit, and one resigned altogether, after Barr stepped in and reversed their recommendations for Stone’s sentence after Trump tweeted that he wished it so. The Post also notes, “Almost simultaneously, Trump decided to revoke the nomination to a top Treasury Department post of his former U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, who had supervised the Stone case when it went to trial.”
Even worse, as Greg Sargent points out, Barr is working to make the Russia attack on our election system disappear altogether. Trump made that clear in his tweet this morning: “Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!”
Sargent writes:
This is a straight-up celebration of the fact that in intervening for Stone — who was convicted of obstructing Congress and witness tampering in connection with investigations into Russian subversion of our election — Barr is doing the president’s political bidding.
In their original recommendation of a stiff sentence for Stone, prosecutors explicitly noted he’d obstructed an investigation designed to provide a full accounting of that attack on our political system.
But now Trump is openly declaring that in interfering, Barr is helping to delegitimize that investigation entirely. In short, Barr — who has tasked prosecutor John Durham with “reviewing” the investigation’s origins — is helping Trump make the Russian attack disappear.
Sadly, we can all count on Hannity to cover up and misinform about these attacks on our democracy in ways that will make Vladimir Putin gloat.
You can watch a foretaste below, from the February 11, 2020 Hannity, via Media Matters.
