They never were admirable or respectable. Niether one of them. These men did not have a reverse-road-to-Damascus conversion. That people admired or respected them is beside the point. Those people were wittingly fooled or not paying attention.
Every great authoritarian enterprise comes to its apotheosis more from the soulless, mechanical efficiency of armies of bureaucrats and police than from the rantings of whatever Great Leader or revolutionary firebrand mounts the podium. A four-hour, spittle-flecked speech in Berlin, Havana, Moscow, or Kigali is, in the end, less consequential than the memos and slide decks of competent people given over to the service of evil.
Bad governments don’t start as nihilist terror; they’re the work of people who look like your neighbors. They build anodyne policy directives to justify the acidic erosion of the rule of law. They put the tools of government and administration to darker and darker purposes while compartmentalizing inevitable excesses in the name of political expediency.
Daily Beast
He wasn't referring to anything. He was muddying the water to protect Trump.Attorney General William P. Barr made the remarkable claim that the Trump campaign might have been the target of “spying” by law enforcement during the 2016 campaign.
[...]
Barr did say the core question is whether that spying was justified, and said it might have been. But this nonetheless counters what intelligence officials have said, which is that they did undertake a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and potential Trump campaign conspiracy with it during the campaign — but that no spying occurred.
Indeed, Barr even said the Justice Department would be examining the genesis of the Russia probe. While Barr did clarify that this wouldn’t be an “investigation of the FBI” and subsequently walked back the spying claim a bit, he also said there was “probably a failure among a group of leaders there in the upper echelon,” which, remarkably, seems like he’s largely made up his mind on this question already.
[...]
“I’m shocked to hear the attorney general of the United States casually make the suggestion that the FBI or intelligence community was spying on the president’s campaign,” [Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee] told me. “I’m sure it was very gratifying to Donald Trump.”
[...]
Trump has made many extremely lurid variations of the same claim, including suggesting that President Barack Obama ordered his phone tapped.
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Schiff pointed out that the bipartisan Gang of Eight — the leaders and intelligence committee chairs in both parties — were already briefed by the Justice Department after Trump made yet another version of the assertion.
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“It’s unclear to me what Barr was referring to,” Schiff said.
WaPo
And that.“All I can make of it is that he wanted to say something pleasing to the boss, and did so at the cost of our institutions," Schiff said.
Tin pot dictatorship.Barr had previously said the fake Uranium One Hillary Clinton scandal was more worthy of investigation than collusion with Russia was.
[...]
“We’ll certainly try to get to the bottom of many of the things he has been saying over the last two days — his references to investigation into the president’s political opponents.”
“His testimony raises profound concern that the attorney general is doing what we urge emerging democracies not to do, and that is, seek to prosecute your political opponents after you win an election,” Schiff continued, in an apparent reference to Barr’s vow to examine the beginnings of the investigation, precisely as Trump has long demanded.
[...]
“The big picture is this,” Schiff said. “The post-Watergate reforms are being dismantled, one by one. The Trump precedent after only two years is that you can fire the FBI director who is running an investigation in which you may be implicated as president.”
“You can hire an attorney general who has applied for the job by telling you why he thinks the case against you is bogus," Schiff continued. "That new attorney general can then selectively edit the work of an independent or special prosecutor, and allow the Congress and the public to see only parts of it. And that new attorney general can also initiate inquiries into the president’s political opponents.”
Which, if true (and I've heard people who worked with him in the past - and greatly admire him - suggest that it is, him being a by-the-book follow-the-rules guy, which is why they admire him), sullies the impression that Bob Mueller is a stand-up guy.Since Barr released his four-page summary exonerating Trump, some on Mueller’s team have claimed he played down the seriousness of their findings.
Some have pointed out that Barr is undertaking those redactions with Mueller’s input, and that this should alleviate concerns. I asked Schiff whether that was a fair argument.
“It’s very hard to tell what [Mueller’s] role is,” Schiff argued. “If Barr tells him to redact anything vis-a-vis people who have not been indicted, then I’m sure that’s what Bob Mueller will do. If he instructs him to redact anything that was produced to the grand jury, then I’m sure he’ll do that. It really depends on the marching orders that Bob Mueller is given.”
No, it definitely does not.I asked Schiff whether one can envision a less alarmist scenario, in which Barr redacts less than we expect (he has vowed not to undertake any redactions to protect Trump) and the Gang of Eight gets the full report.
“It’s entirely possible that Barr will surprise us by redacting very little,” Schiff conceded. “It doesn’t seem like he is headed that way.”
UPDATE:In a rational world, it might be reasonable to give the attorney general of the United States the benefit of the doubt that he would put the rule of law ahead of his political loyalties. But we live in this world and I’m now less willing than ever to extend that sort of trust to Bill Barr.
[...]
(1) The essential, fundamental first fact in any discussion of Bill Barr is obviously this: He is Donald Trump’s handpicked attorney general.
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Trump thinks the attorney general’s prime directive should [be] to protect him, Donald Trump … to be, in Trump’s words, “my Roy Cohn,” a fixer and a shield. The president fired Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, precisely because he wasn’t.
[...]
All of Trump’s efforts to obstruct this investigation played out in plain sight and in real time as Trump fired his FBI director, dangled pardons, attacked witnesses, threatened and humiliated his attorney general. These things didn’t happen in darkened alleys, or in whispered conversations picked up by wiretaps. They were broadcast on Twitter and played out under klieg lights.
[...]
[N]o one could have been under any illusions about what was expected of a Trumpian AG, especially after he installed a hack like Matthew Whitaker in the role of acting attorney general.
[...]
And yet, Barr – who had watched all of this from close up – eagerly sought out and an accepted the appointment from Trump’s hand.
Pick me, he said. I’m your man.
2. Barr auditioned for the job by suggesting he would protect Trump from charges of obstruction of justice . . . and then did precisely that.
In June 2018, Barr wrote an unsolicited memo to Trump’s team accusing Mueller of pursuing a “fatally misconceived” legal theory of obstruction of justice. He argued that the president should not be investigated for taking actions that were within his powers, even if he used them to block an investigation.
[...]
Barr argued that Mueller’s investigation “is premised on a novel and legally insupportable reading of the law. Moreover, in my view, if credited by the department, it would have grave consequences far beyond the immediate confines of this case and would do lasting damage to the presidency and to the administration of law within the executive branch.”
[...]
“Mueller should not be permitted to demand that the president submit to interrogation about alleged obstruction,” Barr wrote. As it turned out, Mueller never talked with Trump.
3. As attorney general, Barr has done exactly what he suggested he would do.
[...]
Barr could have simply passed on Mueller’s findings to Congress. Instead Barr inserted himself into the supposedly non-political process by quickly determining that the evidence gathered by Mueller “is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.”
[...]
4. His four page letter to Congress was woefully inadequate and potentially misleading.
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Barr’s brief letter was designed more to provide cover to Trump than it was to fairly summarize the findings of Mueller’s investigation. This ought to have been obvious from the beginning, given the paucity of quotes from the actual report.
[...]
Obviously, we won’t know whether or how Barr misrepresented the investigation’s findings until we see the report; but even then, skepticism about Barr’s redactions seems warranted, especially in light of his comments and evasions this week.
[...]
It’s a fair question to ask why anyone would think that Barr would be willing to sacrifice his reputation by fudging Mueller’s findings, since they will inevitably become public. The short answer is ayfkm?
If we have learned anything at all in the last few years it is that Trumpism is a bonfire of reputations.
[...]
5. The overriding question about Barr’s credibility centers on whether he is acting independently of the Trump White House. His answers this week did little to allay concerns.
As CNN reported, “Barr repeatedly refused to answer a direct question as to whether the White House has seen — or will see — the full Mueller report prior to its release."
[...]
That is a change from Barr’s past statement just 11 days ago when he said in a letter sent to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees. “Although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report,” Barr wrote in that letter, “he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”[...]
So as of March 29, there were “no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.” But as of today, Barr wouldn’t answer whether the White House has or would see the report prior to its release. Which suggests, at least to me, that the White House either has or could see the report before its release.
6. Barr is refusing to seek a court order that would permit the release of grand jury testimony.
[...]
The special counsel in both the Watergate and Clinton probes sought and received permission to include such materials in their reports to Congress.
[...]
[...]
7. But perhaps the most dramatic and troubling indication of Barr’s willingness to do Trump’s bidding came Tuesday in his testimony before the Senate, in which he suggested that he was launching an investigation into “spying” on the Trump campaign.
Barr’s comments seemed to give Trump something he long wanted: a Department of Justice that would not merely protect him, but would investigate and perhaps prosecute his political opponents and critics. [...] Barr admitted he has no evidence that anything untoward had, in fact happened. “I have no specific evidence that I would cite right now, I do have questions about it.”
Barr also admitted that the most important question, is whether the alleged “spying” was “adequately predicated. I’m not saying it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”
[...]
Predictably, Barr’s comments were eagerly received by his audience of one:
Trump, speaking to reporters Wednesday morning before Barr’s testimony began, blasted Mueller’s probe, referring to it as an “attempted takedown of a president.”And now, it appears, he has an attorney general willing to do something about it.
“What they did was treason,” Trump added.
The Bulwark
Bingo.
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