CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin had a conniption Tuesday evening on Anderson Cooper’s show, AC 360, over the Attorney General assigning a federal prosecutor to look into how the Mueller probe began.
News broke Monday that Attorney General Bill Barr had assigned U.S. attorney John H. Durham of Connecticut to investigate this as well as determine if the FBI had done anything “unlawful or inappropriate” in spying on the Trump campaign.
According to the New York Times, Durham has experience “investigating potential wrongdoing among national security officials.” On AC 360, Cooper let Toobin rant about how “chilling” this was.
“So Jeff, this investigation into the investigators, this is what the president has been calling for. So, to say he knows nothing about it or didn't ask for it, do you buy that?” Cooper threw the softball.
Following the Democrats’ lead, Toobin argued this was an “unnecessary” witch hunt that sends a “chilling message” and “harasses” people who “defy” President Trump’s “wishes:”
Not only don't I buy it, think about the chilling message it sends to career non-political people in the FBI, in the Justice Department. What it means is, if you defy the president's wishes, his political appointees like the Attorney General, they won't initiate one investigation, they won't initiate two. Three investigations of you for doing your job. It's a really chilling message. This is a completely unnecessary investigation by the Connecticut U.S. Attorney. It's completely duplicative of the inspector general's investigation. And it's just a way of harassing people who have done their jobs, but not to the satisfaction of the President of the United States.
It’s comical to watch Toobin and his CNN colleagues to get so worked up for what they feel is an unfair investigation...Hmm, where’ve we heard that before?
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we can expect the network to attack it as illegitimate any chance they get. In fact, CNN already is beginning to sow the seeds of distrust about how this investigation is going to be a partisan sham. Look at how they described the prosecutor Barr assigned:
A federal prosecutor's "apolitical" reputation is on the line as he helps Attorney General Barr review the origins of the Russia investigation https://t.co/UHeTjwwN5S pic.twitter.com/W8B2a56NhV
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 15, 2019
