Nasty Kamala

Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2019

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has gained a well-earned reputation for nastiness in her treatment of witnesses that appear before her congressional committees.  Repeated watching of her questioning reveals the underlying technique.  It is a technique that makes her look good on television and is especially effective against witnesses who are taken aback or are flustered by her performance.  When it fails, she can look bad, though not spectacularly so.  Her technique tends to backfire when the witness is not flustered by her attacks.

Her questioning of Attorney-General Willian Barr this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee exposed her technique to analysis.  In her cross-examination of Barr, she placed an emphasis upon the credentials of the people she was citing, and she assumed the air of an expert who was examining the work of some pretender.  In the Kavanaugh hearings, she exuded an air of menace that comes from the secret knowledge she has and the witness, apparently, does not.  If the witness gets flustered, her air of expertise and secret knowledge can appear devastating to the credibility of the witness.  Harris also frequently interrupts the witness’s answer when it looks like the witness is answering the question well.  She also bobs her head when questioning in a manner that suggests impatience with a recalcitrant witness and an expertise on her part.

She began be asking Barr a vague question that required a yes or no answer.  Then she actually says, “Yes or no?”  Since the question is vague, by manipulating the meaning of the terms, you can make the witness appear to lie.  At other times, in a rising voice she prepares her question in a hectoring and menacing way, insinuating that she knows what she is talking about and the witness does not.  She will repeat a question in a manner of impatience, suggesting with witness is evading something.

She questioned Barr about whether or not he and Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein had consulted with “career ethics officials” before they did anything.  She described Mueller as a “career” prosecutor.  The unflappable Barr looked a little flustered as he wondered why he would consult DoJ ethics officials, career or otherwise, at all since he had no conflicts.  He denied that Mueller was a “career prosecutor.”  Harris then switched to the conflict that Rod Rosenstein had, brazenly repeating a Republican talking point, his being both a witness to the Comey firing and to overseeing the Mueller investigation.  Was Rosenstein cleared by “career ethics officials” to both oversee the Mueller investigation and to participate in charging decisions, she wondered?  And had Barr personally consulting with CEO’s about Rosenstein’s ability to participate.  At first, Barr couldn’t understand what she was driving at, wondering if she knew how things were done at the DoJ, until finally, with bemusement, he said that making charging decisions was Rosenstein’s job, and that the Senate had confirmed Rosenstein in that job by a vote of 94-6.

Another line she took against Barr was whether or not he had personally examined the underlying evidence of the Mueller report before he decided not to charge the president with obstruction of justice.  Barr replied that he hadn’t, and said repeatedly that he relied on Mueller’s report as being truthfully representative of the underlying evidence.  Harris continued to badger Barr about examining the underlying evidence of the report in a manner that suggested that that is what Mueller’s supervisors are supposed to do.  Barr tried to explain to her how charging decisions were actually made, but it was no use.  She might have invoked her expertise as a former A-G of California to impatiently explain to Barr how eggs were to be sucked.  Each time, Barr simply said the reasonable thing, that he relied on what Mueller said was factual and truthful, and that neutralized her attack.  What Harris was demanding was that Barr find something in the evidence that Mueller did not, in particular cause to charge president Trump with obstruction of justice.  She was also expecting Barr is have examined the 2 million or so pages of evidence and testimony amassed by Mueller.  She was also expressing a distrust of underlings.  If the Mueller team was paid $35 million over 22 months and couldn’t be trusted with producing a report that accurately and truthfully reflected their work, then perhaps another team ought to have been hired.  And if Harris, when A-G of California, actually did review the evidence underlying the reports of underlings, she mustn’t have got much of her own work done.  It also must have been hell working for a boss who was so distrustful.  Moreover, why trust the underlying evidence?  If the underling can’t be trusted to report findings accurately, why trust them to accumulate “findings” at all?  Soon, Harris would be doing the ballistics evaluation herself.

Her habit of badgering the witness can make Harris look particularly Stalinist on occasion.  Jeff Sessions grew so frustrated at her constant interruptions that he addressed the committee chair and asked permission to answer the questions.  Harris was silenced by the committee chair – over her squawked objections.  On another occasion, retired Marine Corps 4-star General John Kelly, while he was DHS Secretary made Harris look bad when he unflappably returned answers to her badgering, and calmly asked her to shut up long enough for him to answer.

Harris is supremely qualified to be a Stalinist inquisitor.  She badgers witnesses, feigns a secret knowledge, and seems to menace the witness with what she secretly knows, sometimes cautioning him to be careful in his answer.  She asks questions full of vague terms.  She pretends to expertise herself, sometimes insinuating a secret expertise she has, and she emphasizes the expertise of the people she knows the witness didn’t make use of.  All of it can be quite intimidating and requires an unflappability on the part of the witness to survive looking whole.  As a TV spectacle, her technique is calculated to make her look good, in a dangerous sort of way, at the expense of the witness.  And even when she is gotten the better of, she makes it appear as if she were victimized in some way.

Altogether, a nasty piece of work.
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