Sadly, in his current (second) term as Attorney General Mr. Barr has demonstrated
repeated disregard of the principles for which our institution stands. Since 2019 Attorney
General Barr has made the Department of Justice unrecognizable to those of us who prize its
independence from politics and its commitment to the highest standards of the legal profession.
[...]
William Barr’s actions as Attorney General since 2019 have undermined the rule of law,
breached constitutional norms, and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his
office and of the Department of Justice.
[...]
We regard Attorney General Barr’s purported summaries [of the Mueller report] as misleading and deceptive,
and we must ask ourselves why he issued them. The only answer that seems plausible is that
Attorney General Barr intended the result that Special Counsel Mueller warned about: i.e., to
create public confusion about critical aspects of the Mueller investigation and to undermine full
public confidence in the outcome of the investigation.
[...]
[R]oughly 2,000 veterans of the Department of Justice (“DOJ Alumni”) joined
in a Feb. 16, 2020 public letter criticizing the President and Attorney General Barr [for interfering in the sentencing of Roger Stone]. We borrow
from that public statement in describing the significance of the Stone case. The letter explains:
[i]t is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors
[who serve as civil servants without political appointments], who are following
established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of
the President. That is what Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. And,
worse, he did so after the President publicly condemned the sentencing
recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.
We agree with the DOJ Alumni that the public could only conclude that the Attorney General
believed that fulfilling the President’s personal wishes was more important than ensuring evenhanded
justice for all federal criminal defendants.
[...]
DOJ Alumni, including many who had protested the revised sentencing
memorandum in the Stone case, also criticized the motion in the Flynn case. The Attorney
General once again sought to do a favor for the President, despite Flynn’s lies to his superiors
and to the FBI, and Flynn’s robust admission to criminal acts. As the DOJ Alumni put it in a public
letter on May 11, 2020: “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to
punish their enemies and reward their allies are autocracies, not constitutional republics.”
[...]
Although Attorney General Barr has denied issuing any orders to the law enforcement
officers [at Lafayette Square during a peaceful protest to violently clear the area], spokespersons for the Department of Justice and the White House have said he was in
charge and gave the orders. We need not attempt to resolve those discrepancies here. It is
undeniable that the Attorney General, who was on the scene, made no effort to assure that the
First Amendment rights of lawful protestors were protected. He made matters worse by
participating with President Trump in a photo opportunity in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church,
whose leaders had neither been asked for nor granted permission for partisan exploitation of
their house of worship. At a critical moment in American history, Attorney General Barr could
have been a leader in protecting Americans’ First Amendment right to express their outrage at
our nation’s long history of institutional racism, and police brutality against people of color.
Instead, Attorney General Barr stands on the wrong side of history.
[...]
DOJ Alumni initially called upon Attorney General Barr to resign, though they
conceded he was unlikely to do so. They requested that Congress exercise its oversight authority
to review Barr’s official conduct and formally censure him. They further asked the Inspector
General of the Department of Justice to initiate a formal inquiry into Barr’s conduct. We endorse
all of those requests.
We express the most severe opprobrium for Barr’s actions as Attorney General. We are
not motivated by political partisanship. We include members of both major political parties, and
of none. We have different legal specialties and represent a broad spectrum of approaches to
the law. Our diversity is a strength as we pull together to respond to a time of national crisis,
exacerbated by an Attorney General who has fallen well below the minimal threshold his office
requires.
[...]
By this letter, we seek to demonstrate to our current and former students, our
colleagues in the legal profession and legal academia, and the general public that we are deeply
disturbed by Barr’s actions as Attorney General since 2019 and their implications for our
democracy. Attorney General Barr has besmirched the basic values of our law school and the
legal profession.
