Barney Frank Spars With GOP Senator: Stop Using 'Weasel Words'

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While appearing together on CNN's State of the Union this morning, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison sparred over her implication that the FBI intentionally sat on the revelations about Gen. David Petraeus' extramarital affair until after the election, with Frank accusing the senator of using a 'weasel word' to make her point.

'I'm very worried,' Hutchison told host Candy Crowley. 'I want to know a whole lot more about what these first emails really were and did it really trigger an FBI investigation of the CIA director and a low level and it wasn't raised to a higher level? If anybody is investigating the director of the CIA, the President of the United States should know immediately, and I feel like, a, we don't know enough, and, b, I have great concerns about a lot of this.'

Frank then shot back: 'Are you suggesting there was some cover-up, that the FBI are playing games? I think we ought to be explicit about this. I'm troubled by the implication of your statement and are you suggesting that something wasn't legitimate here? Because that would trouble me.'

A little later on, the exchange got a bit tense:

HUTCHISON: I'm suggesting that I have great concerns about the legitimacy of '

FRANK: Excuse me, 'great concerns' is kind of a weasel word '

HUTCHISON: It appears the President didn't know until two months later?

FRANK: It seems to me frankly you're kind of hinting at something bad, and I don't see what that could be.

HUTCHISON: I'm hinting at something out of control and not with the proper authority.

FRANK: Do you distrust the FBI? Is [FBI Director Robert] Mueller lying? Who are you accusing of not having done the right thing?

HUTCHISON: I've always had great respect for him and great respect for General Petraeus.

Watch below, via CNN:

[h/t ThinkProgress]
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• I do not know or care whether the FBI withheld the findings of their investigation. I want to know who made up the lie that a stand down order was issued.

• Barney Frank Spars With GOP Senator: Stop Using 'Weasel Words'

  Well it is their native tongue.

• That woman has never been concerned about anything that did not fit her twisted narrative that ALWAYS supports what ever the Cult of Conservatism is pushing and she is a scummy witch for saying that America would be a better place if the 19th Amendment had not been enacted.

• LOL.

• The conservative media entertainment complex with the help of Judge Napalitano who blatantly lied about having access to secret and classified information on Benghazi when he was on Fox & Fiends where he goes to plant his lies and watch them grow.

• Grayson seems to have the balls to take over for Barney as the discomfortingly anti-BS congressman.

• More post-election whining. The country needs to get down to business.