I'll never forget his answer to a reporter's question after the Senate refused to acquit Clinton (I paraphrase) . . .
"Well, the people chose Barabbas, too -- didn't they?"
Allow me to embellish the story with an excerpt from The Greatest Story Ever Told.
By the time Annas reached home, a crowd had gathered before his front door. Rough-looking men stood idly talking together, like laborers waiting for a foreman to come and give orders. Which, Annas reflected with satisfaction, was exactly what they were - laborers, hired mobmen, shouters, screamers, fist-shakers, noisy professional pickets who would rail against any person or any cause - for pay. Tonight Caiphas would be their foreman.Caiphas had worked swiftly. Not only had he assembled these hirelings to give tongue at the proper time, and sound as if they were the voice of all Judea, howling for blood, he had also assembled a troop of Temple guards, sentinels without weapons. These were men of the priestly classes, very important, too, and they let you know it by the way they swung their shoulders as they walked and the scornful way in which they looked past people in trouble. Their duties were to guard the Temple and maintain order; they had already been greatly reproached for not having prevented the disastrous scene in the Temple, when Jesus overturned the tables and whipped the money-changers.
... Presently they would be joined by Roman soldiers with armor and swords, who would give empire authority to the arrest.