Someone: “I’m not watching this Sessions hearing, it’s just the Democrats asking a bunch of ‘gotcha!’ questions.”
Yes.
That’s how an investigation works. You ask “gotcha” questions because you want to try pulling the truth out of them. You lead with facts and evidence from one angle and get the man to respond, then approach from another angle and see if the response is the same. You rephrase and repeat, and the more the stoy lines up consistently and the better the details, the more you trust the witness. If you suspect someone is lying, you have to try and trick them.
This now leads to my problem with the Republican lines of questioning: they never follow up or try to phrase the questions in a way that allows Sessions to “properly explain himself” in the wake of the “gotcha” questions. They try to turn the subject to other matters; they don’t ask for a full account of what Sessions actually talked about with Kilsyak in order to clarify that there was no talk of collusion, they instead talk about the dangers of sanctuary cities.
It all reeks of them knowing that Sessions is guilty and that they are trying to protect him/steer the conversation. There is no “Okay, you say you didn’t do it, so can you explain what you were doing instead?” There’s no request for anecdotes or assurances pertinent to the reason why he has been summoned before a committee for the third time.
