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Rep. Barney Frank Interrupts Republican Senator and Calls Her Rhetoric a 'Weasel Word' During Petraeus Scandal Discussion

"I’m hinting at something out of control and not with the proper authority..."

During CNN's "State of the Union" hosted by Candy Crawley Sunday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) was trying to explain she had questions regarding the timeline of the investigation into former CIA Director David Petraeus' affair, when Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) interrupted her and called her out for using "a weasel word."

This portion of the discussion, which also included Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), was pointed out to by the progressive blog Think Progress, which also published the clip from the show:

In the clip, Hutchison said:

"[...] 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 at a low level and it wasn't raised to a higher level? I mean, 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 [...]."

Kyl clarifies that the director wasn't immediately being investigated. It actually began as an investigation into whether someone had unauthorized access to the director's email. Hutchison wonders "at what level were these decisions being made. I just think there needs to be a whole lot more ..."

Frank then steps in saying:

"Are you suggesting there was some coverup, 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."

Hutchison continued to clarify saying that she's "suggesting that I have great concerns about the legitimacy...". Frank interrupts again saying, "Excuse me, 'great concerns' is kind of a weasel word."

The discussion continues with Hutchison explaining that she finds it strange that the president wasn't aware of the situation until two months into the investigation.

"I’m hinting at something out of control and not with the proper authority," Hutchison said. She continued saying that she has great respect for FBI Director Robert Mueller and Gen. Petraeus but she still wants to know the sequence of events and when "top level people were making decisions."

During a different part in the show, Crawley brings up public perception of Congress, specifically how they feel when they hear that approval for Congress is at an all time low. In this segment, Mediaite pointed out that Frank said he doesn't feel guilty about these sentiments because the people give "a very inconsistent set of messages" to Congress of what they want.

"The people themselves are internally gridlocked," Frank said.

"I'm not troubled by our inability to do what some of the them want us to do, which is impossible," Frank said later.

Watch that clip:

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