Clinton appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC just hours after the contentious hearing in which Barr took questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on the report by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Among the things the 448-page report revealed was Trump’s fixation on targeting Clinton as a subject for further investigation.
“I’m living rent free inside of Donald Trump’s brain, and it’s not a very nice place to be, I can tell you that,” said Clinton, the former secretary of state who was defeated by Trump in the 2016 election.
“When in doubt, go after me,” she said of the Republican Party’s strategy. “This is part of their whole technique to divert attention from what the real story is. The real story is the Russians interfered in our election. And Trump committed obstruction of justice. That’s the real story.”
The Mueller report found that there was insufficient evidence to establish that Trump or his associates engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia to disrupt the 2016 election, despite numerous contacts between his campaign and Russians. It also detailed the president’s efforts to thwart the investigation, and the investigators examined evidence whether the episodes amounted to criminal obstruction of justice. Trump has insisted inaccurately that the report provided “total exoneration.”
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Barr has faced scrutiny for his handling of the report’s release, which has intensified since Tuesday when it was disclosed that Mueller had written a letter objecting to Barr’s early description of the Russia investigation’s conclusions. Following Wednesday’s hearing, several prominent Democrats called on Barr to resign.
“I think that the Democrats on the committee did a good job today in exposing that he is the president’s defense lawyer,” Clinton said of Barr. “He is not the attorney general of the United States in the way that he has conducted himself.”
In her television interview, Clinton said calling for his resignation “makes perfect sense” but warned against allowing Barr’s behavior to divert attention from the findings of the Mueller report.
She called for hearings, but not immediate impeachment proceedings against Trump, urging Congress to continue to investigate the president.
“There’s a lot of important material to be explored, so you have to do it in a way that creates a narrative,” Clinton said. “What is it you’re finding out? Where does it lead? But if it leads to the conclusion that this president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, that’s what should motivate the Congress to act.”
Clinton, who recently also appeared in a comedy sketch in which she performed a dramatic reading of the Mueller report, said that the report had made clear that “the Russians were successful” in sowing “discord and divisiveness” in the country, and helping Trump.
She said she has spoken to several candidates for the Democratic nomination for president and has warned them that they could run a great campaign, win the nomination and lose the 2020 general election because of foreign influence in it.
“I worry a lot,” she said.
Clinton then laid out a hypothetical to Maddow asking her to imagine a Democratic candidate for president coming on her show and saying: “China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns. I’m sure our media would richly reward you.”
“Now, according to the Mueller report, that is not conspiracy because it’s done right out in the open,” Clinton said. The remark echoed one made by Trump about Clinton’s private emails during the 2016 campaign: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump had said.
“If you’re going to let Russia get away with what they did and are still doing,” Clinton continued sarcastically, why not “have a great power contest and let’s get the Chinese in on the side of somebody else.”
“Just saying that shows how absurd the situation we find ourselves in,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.