On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” 2016 Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that Attorney General William Barr made an argument about the president’s ability to fire people investigating him that “is what authoritarians believe and those who service them argue.”
Host Rachel Maddow said, “In terms of Barr’s argument about that today, he went, I believe, even further than he went in his 19-page memo when he suggested, under questioning from Senator Leahy (I-VT), that the president could, without obstructing justice, by virtue of the fact that he’s president, fire any prosecutor who was investigating him if the president believed himself to be innocent of the accusations that that prosecutor was investigating. Now, that is not just the president can’t obstruct justice. That is the president can’t be investigated if the president doesn’t want to be investigated.”
Hillary responded, “And that is the road to tyranny. That is what authoritarians believe and those who service them argue. And as a young lawyer on the Watergate investigation back in 1974, that would have been unthinkable for either a Democrat or a Republican to argue that. And the Saturday Night Massacre occurred because the attorney general and other high-ranking officials in the Justice Department would not do what President Nixon wanted them to do, which was basically, stop investigating me.”
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