Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Thursday September 21st, 2023.

I'm John Podhor, it's the editor of commentary magazine, commending to your attention are November 12th roast of Tom Cotton in New York City for information on the roast how to get tickets, how to buy tables, please go to commentary.org slash roast present along with Tom cotton will be roasters Elliott Abrams Ben Shapiro Barry Weiss some other people that I'm

probably forgetting Dan Seymour and present as well will be my colleagues here executive editor a greenwald hi Abe hi John media commentary columnist and American

Enterprise Institute senior fellow Christine Rosen high Christine hi John and the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and our Washington commentary columnist Matthew

got in any high mat hi John. Okay, this morning I watched about two hours of Attorney General America Arlen appearing for the House Oversight Committee to answer questions relating to the handling of the Hunter Biden prosecution investigation by the FBI and by the Justice Department and by and by David Weiss who began as the US Attorney

in Delaware overseeing the investigation and in recent weeks, not much more than a few weeks became a special prosecutor and of course after the sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden with the Justice Department fell apart in a Delaware courtroom has now indicted Hunter Biden on three charges relating to a gun possession.

And the purpose of the hearing led by Jim Jordan I'm sorry, did I say it was oversight because I guess Jordan isn't oversight right Jordan is judiciary it was a judiciary committee I'm sorry I said oversight and I was I was mistaken so and you you watched it on Thursday or you watched it on a Wednesday and this will be on Thursday the people that is correct. Okay, yes, we are actually I will now confess we are taping this.

Wednesday night. So that's why you said you were watching earlier this morning. So unless there was a earlier today. It would have been. Yeah, hidden hearing. Yeah, so I apologize for I apologize for my effort to fake the timeline. You're going to hear a little of this by the way tomorrow on Friday's podcast because we actually recorded Friday's podcast yesterday because we have a bunch of the flat circle here at the podcast and that also though

Matt is scolding me for having screwed this up today Matt kept referring to today when he meant Tuesday and that you're going to hear that on Friday. So I'm I'm now castigating him because he called me out. So I'm now calling him out because that's what we do here.

Radical accountability. Radical accountability here on the podcast call out cultures begins at the commentary podcast. That is correct. All right, so let's talk about Mara Garland and the and his and his testimony.

He's a very emotional person. Mara Garland, it turns out and he kept losing control of his emotions and I was kind of under the impression that he was being

showy and historic on purpose almost as a as a kind of weighted dodge or deflect because he started. He kind of started tearing up when he said this country provided by family with a refuge and that's why I've dedicated my life in its service.

Why it's so important to me and he was kind of tearing up and then later he got very agitated about being accused of showing religious bias toward the Catholic church and he got very angry and he was like a person with my background and my history to say that I would show any religious discrimination to any denomination is just outrageous.

Garland from a Jewish family grew up in grew up in Illinois and lost relatives as almost every Jewish family in the world did in the Holocaust and so the first thing I would say is that he was very much engaged emotionally engaged which is not something you often see when you watch hearings of polished.

Administration officials whose purpose is to deflect and to shield and want don't want to show that they're getting rattled or that the or that the interlocutors or hostile interlocutors are getting to them and I as I say started out feeling a little unnerved by this checked with some people.

With that experience with with Garland who said this is kind of what he's actually like which is interesting and and so.

If you didn't like him you probably thought he quitted himself badly if you were not inclined to dislike him before he came in I think he probably came across as a passionate serious person however he was.

He did seem to dissimulate quite a bit at the beginning of his testimony in particular under the questioning of Mike Thompson I believe a Republican from Louisiana who was extremely effective and just kept saying.

What did you say to David Wies what were the nature of your conversations with David Wies about the Hunter Biden prosecution and he defaulted to some pre written line about how he had promised the Senate and a hearing with Chuck Grassley the Republican from Iowa that he would leave David Wies alone to do whatever it was the David Wies thought he needed to do and that he would not interfere and that is what he did and that.

And congressman kept saying well what did you say to him and he said I'm not going to tell you about our internal deliberations and then the congressman said I'm sorry you have to tell us about your internal deliberations we we are the oversight committee over your department and we we must see whether something untoward happened here and Garland actually got a little rattled by that because it's a perfectly fair point a perfectly fair way to characterize.

But kept defaulting to this line meaning obviously that he couldn't say I didn't say anything to David Wies because he could have just said I never said anything to David Wies in line with what I promised Chuck Grassley he just said I kept my promise to Chuck Grassley which could take any number of forms so I don't think he acquitted himself that well in that moment but of course that moment lasted five minutes because each.

Interlocution between Garland and his and the congressman was a five minute chunk of time and so he was then saved by the bell Jerry Nadler the Democratic ranking member of the committee then of course said orange to the most wonderful person on earth and isn't a terrible with the republicans are doing to you and how they just they don't care about anything there are people dying on the streets and here they want to talk about hundred Biden's laptop and there are people dying and they're dying and they shouldn't be talking about.

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