CNN contributor Philip Mudd said on Wednesday night that Attorney General William Barr would be right not to appear at Thursday's House Judiciary Hearing, while speaking about Barr's announcement that he would not be coming to testify before Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D., N.Y.) committee.
"Let me be a bit snitty here. If I were [Bill] Barr, I would tell Jerry Nadler to pound sand. I would tell him to hit the road," Mudd said during a segment on CNN's Situation Room, before explaining why he believed the Nadler's committee had treated Barr unfairly.
"Biggest hearing you might have in your entire chairmanship, you can't bother, you're too lazy to learn the portfolio well enough to ask your own questions? And your members don't have the discipline not to sit here and speak without asking questions? Really?" Mudd said. "And my second question. Who was elected by the American people to oversee the Department of Justice in the most important investigation they have. Was it the members or was it some lawyer that you want to set up Barr with?"
Mudd called the hearing "a set up."
"I think it's petty and I think the Democrats are overreaching," he said. "If I were Barr I'd say, 'I'm going to get martinis, have a good time. Have an empty chair. I’m not going.'"
CNN legal analyst Jeffery Toobin reinforced Mudd's comments, saying that the hearing is "a real lesson in the powerlessness of the house Democrats."
"So they'll issue a subpoena. So they'll find him in contempt. So what?" he said. "It's not going to make any difference. Eric Holder's reputation is entirely intact, even though he was found in contempt. This just shows that if the Trump White House and the Trump Administration want to tell the Democrats who now run the House of Representatives to go pound sand, they're going to have to go pound sand. And they have no recourse that will actually get their witnesses or documents in."
Barr didn't appear at Thursday's hearing.