MSNBC breaks into Barr's Senate testimony: “I'm not going to dance around this. He's lying.”

From MSNBC's May 1 coverage of Attorney General William Barr's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Video file

BRIAN WILLIAMS (ANCHOR): Again, our intention always is to bring as much of this uninterrupted to you as possible. [Sen.] Dick Durbin is coming up after Republican Sen. [John] Cornyn of Texas. But so much has been said here and placed on the record by the attorney general that, starting with Nicole Wallace, we want to correct some of the record against of all things, what it says in the Mueller report. Nicole.

NICOLE WALLACE (MSNBC HOST): So, I'm not going to dance around this. He's lying. He's lying about what the Mueller report finds around one of the critical flashpoints in the obstruction investigation. One of the incidents that was investigated by Robert Mueller and his obstruction investigators was the attempted firing of the special counsel. It was one of the incidents that was under investigation into, really, days before Mueller wrapped up. He's quibbling with whether removing Mueller and firing him is the same thing. Here's how Donald Trump talked about removing/firing special counsel Mueller.

This is from Chris Christie's testimony, one of five witnesses cited in the footnotes of the Mueller obstruction report, about Donald Trump's efforts to fire Robert Mueller. “Chris Christie recalled a telephone conversation with the president in which the president asked what Christie thought about the president firing” -- firing, not removing -- “the special counsel. Christie advised against doing so because there was no ... basis for the president to fire the special counsel and because the president would lose support from Republicans in Congress.” I'm going to disagree with Christie on that.

Here's [Don] McGahn's testimony. I'm not going to read all the witnesses, but here's McGahn on the president's effort to make McGahn fire him. Again, from the footnote in the obstruction report. Although McGahn recalled receiving multiple calls from the president on the same day, he was not certain on the specific dates but he was confident that he had at least two phone conversations with the president in which the president directed him to call the acting attorney general and have the special counsel removed.

It's also the colorful reporting from this report where Don McGahn says to Reince Priebus, which is the third witness to this incident, the president asked me to do some crazy shit. And I'm sorry to swear. But I think we've got an attorney general lying about what is in the Mueller report around what was one of the most investigated flashpoints in the obstruction investigation. And my question, again, is why.

WILLIAMS: Why did the president -- the Republicans seem to be relitigating the presidency of Hillary Clinton?

WALLACE: Well, what's interesting to me about that is it's not like that's not under control. There's an inspector general that has looked at the conduct of FBI agents Pete Strzok and Lisa Page. I heard [Sen.] Lindsey Graham dropped an f-bomb for panache or to make the highlight reel of Fox News prime.

WILLIAMS: The score is one to one.

WALLACE: Yeah, but the real mystery -- and I don't know if it's much of a mystery anymore -- is why is he doing the thing that Robert Mueller wrote two letters accusing him of doing, which is distorting the contents of the Mueller probe.

Previously:

Laura Ingraham calls into Fox “straight news” show to defend Trump's attorney general: “Preposterous” to say that Barr misled the public

Media outlets’ context-free headlines on AG Barr’s “spying” claim help fuel right-wing falsehoods

Media trumpeted William Barr's spin on the Mueller report (again) -- will they ever learn?