Mike Huckabee rips House Judiciary Committee amid contempt vote: 'This is all pontificating'

close

Video

Huckabee on Barr contempt proceedings: Get the cameras out of there

The House Judiciary Committee's political theater is a waste of time and money, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee accused the House Judiciary Committee of engaging in uneccessary political "theater" as it considered whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress.

"It produces nothing but extraordinary partisan rancor," he told "Outnumbered" host Harris Faulkner on Wednesday. He told Faulkner that the committee's members were "pontificating" and indicated the whole hearing should happen behind closed doors.

The best thing they could do is turn the cameras off ... put only the members of Congress in the room and say 'you guys talk about this.' But get the cameras out of there and the microphones out of there," he said.

He added that the hearing was a "waste of our time and money," saying that "nobody in that room is serious about resolving an issue."

"They're serious about trying to present their side, make their side look good, the other side look bad."

Huckabee's comments came amid news that President Donald Trump claimed executive privilege — blocking the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's unredacted report and other documents — in an apparent response to Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler's, D-N.Y., decision not to postpone a vote on contempt.

"Faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the Attorney General’s request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"The Attorney General has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller Report to the public and offering to testify before the Committee," Sanders also said.

"These attempts to work with the Committee have been flatly rejected. They didn’t like the results of the report, and now they want a redo."