The chilling effects of Bar's investigation

We are now learning extraordinary new details about the lengths to which William P. Barr is going in service of President Trump’s corrupt and all-consuming goal of making core truths about his 2016 election victory disappear.

[...]

Barr appears determined to discredit the special counsel investigation’s finding that Russia engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in our election on Trump’s behalf.

[...]

Barr has already claimed “spying” on Trump’s campaign occurred, feeding Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory of a “deep state” plot to block him from getting elected.

[...]

What if Barr’s activities — whether by coincidence or design — end up chilling how intelligence officials respond to the next foreign effort to sabotage a U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf?

  WaPo

It's not enough that Trump won. He needs to change the narrative surrounding his win to match what he wanted it to be in his head.

“This is designed to validate a conspiracy theory — that Russia didn’t interfere, and that the whole Mueller probe was a ‘witch hunt,’” [Rep. Tom] Malinowski, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told me. The goal, he said, is to paint the intelligence community and FBI as the “villains in that conspiracy theory.”

[...]

“There’s a message to our intelligence community, which is, ‘Don’t go there,’” Malinowski told me. “They’re being investigated for doing their jobs the last time.”

What’s more, Malinowski pointed out, foreign intelligence officials and governments might take a similar message from Barr’s efforts to enlist them in his current internal review.

“Are you going to share intelligence with this administration next year if you pick up evidence of Russian interference?” Malinowski noted, referring to foreign officials, who will ask themselves: “How will such information be received by the Trump administration? Do you pass along something that is clearly unwanted?”

Another reason that Nancy Pelosi's (and others') desire to let the 2020 election remove Trump from office was so dangerously misguided.

Making that point more salient, The Post reports that Barr has taken a “sustained interest” in a conspiracy theory holding that the European academic who originally alerted Trump adviser George Papadopoulos to dirt Russia gathered on Hillary Clinton — which led to the FBI probe — was actually a plant hoping to falsely entrap the Trump campaign.

And one source tells The Post that in his conversations with British officials, Barr “expressed a belief” that the investigation of Russian interference “stemmed from some corrupt origin.”

A second source denies that characterization. But it simply cannot be dismissed as a very real possibility.

Even if that were true, what the investigation turned up was hugely important to the life of this country's apparently very fragile democracy.

One key thing that Trump demanded of the Ukrainian president in the July 25 call is help validating a whackjob conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 email hacks. This, too, would magically make the truth about 2016 disappear — and in [Trump's July 25] call, Trump directed the Ukrainian president to work with Barr to make it true.

The Justice Department has denied any such Barr involvement. But here again, we already know that Barr’s Justice Department helped direct efforts to keep Congress from learning of the whistleblower complaint detailing that corrupt pressure on a foreign leader to interfere in the next U.S. election. Barr didn’t recuse himself from that, despite being personally named in the complaint.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.