What's Barr got the DOJ up to recently?

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it "inadvertently" altered documents that it recently submitted to a federal court as part of its ongoing effort to dismiss the criminal case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

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After a recent batch of handwritten notes were released, two former FBI officials wrote to the court saying that their notes contained dates and markings that were not authentic.

Federal prosecutors acknowledged the discrepancies on Wednesday, saying they were accidentally caused by the FBI agents who examined the original files[, referring to notes by former top FBI official Peter Strzok. They also said a similar error was made on a document written by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe].

  CNN

Accidentally.

The handwritten notes weren't dated, so the FBI agents put sticky notes on the files with "estimated dates," and forgot to remove them before scanning the documents, which were later entered into the court record.

Forgot.

The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.

Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.

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[N]ow if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.

  ProPublica

My guess is especially if they risk affecting the outcome.

Three former American Bar Association presidents, as well as several former judges and state and local bar leaders, are offering support to any Justice Department officials who resign or speak out against evidence of politicization in the waning weeks of the 2020 presidential election.

“The public and these professionals should know that if they stand up to such misuse — whether via resignation, public statements, or other forms of expressive dissent — they will have broad support in the legal profession, whose best traditions they will be upholding,” the attorneys and judges wrote in an open letterhttps://lawyersdefendingdemocracy.org/open-letter-supporting-the-us-doj/ signed by 600 attorneys, judges and DOJ alumni issued Thursday.

The letter is meant to lend backing to officials like James Herbert, a veteran assistant U.S. attorney from Massachusetts, who wrote a scathing letter assailing Attorney General William Barr in the Boston Globe last month, as well as prosecutors who have withdrawn from cases amid concerns about political interference.

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The lawyers say Barr has enabled President Donald Trump’s false claims about alleged voter fraud, raised the specter of releasing politically explosive documents in the heat of the 2020 presidential campaign and routinely intervened in cases affecting allies of the president.

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“Presiding over a federal courtroom for 37 years, I relied on a nonpartisan, independent Justice Department,” said Henderson, the retired federal district judge appointed by Carter. “I fear that under Attorney General Barr, that trust has been shredded.”

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Barr has rejected the notion that he has turned the Justice Department into political weapon for Trump. But in remarks in September, he made a case for rethinking the role of politics in the Justice Department.

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“The Justice Department is not a praetorian guard that watches over society impervious to the ebbs and flows of politics,” Barr said in a Sept. 16 speech at Hillsdale College. In his speech, Barr said the actions of political appointees carry greater weight than those taken by career employees, who “simply do not possess” the demorcratic legitimacy conferred upon those more senior officials.

  Politico