The Sullying of Bill Barr

The Sullying of Bill Barr

Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country – John F Kennedy Inaugural Address – 1961

The New Moral Compass: not what is best for the country, but what is best for Donald Trump – former CIA Director John Brennan 5/1/19

The Attorney General of the United States said under oath yesterday that the President of the United States is above the law – former Senator Claire McCaskill, 5/2/19

William Barr, sixty-eight years old, is the Attorney General of the United States.  He is a product of New York City, with Bachelors and Masters degrees from Columbia University, and a law degree with highest honors from George Washington in Washington, DC.  He served in the CIA, as a clerk in the US Court of Appeals, and on the policy staff of President Ronald Reagan.  

He then moved to the Department of Justice, serving as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Deputy Attorney General, and in 1991was appointed Attorney General of the United States under President George HW Bush.

During his first term of service, he was instrumental in gaining Presidential pardons for six members of the Reagan executive branch who were convicted or charged in the Iran/Contra Affair.  The scandal involved selling surplus US military weapons to Iran, and spending the resulting profits to support insurgents in Nicaragua, both violating US law. Casper Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense, was the highest profile pardon recipient. The pardons effectively ended the investigation into the Affair, and Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel prosecuting the case, stated:

“[The] pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence. Weinberger, who faced four felony charges, deserved to be tried by a jury of citizens.”

With the election of Democrat Bill Clinton as President, Barr went into the private sector.  He was executive vice president and general counsel to GTE (now Verizon) then went into private practice as a consulting corporate attorney.  During that time Barr was also active in conservative Republican politics, including the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. 

In the beginning of the Trump Administration, Barr was secure as an elder statesman of conservative attorneys.  He weighed in on several issues, supporting further investigation of Hillary Clinton, and surprisingly sent a nineteen-page unsolicited memo to both the White House and the Department of Justice, questioning the legal underpinnings of the Mueller Investigation.   It was that memo that brought him to the attention of the White House. They were looking for a long-term replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who fell out of favor with the President by recusing himself from any Trump related issues.

When Barr’s name was first mentioned, many Republicans and more moderate Democrats looked at him as a Department of Justice “institutionalist,” who would protect the reputation and traditions of the Department as a quasi-independent executive agency.  He was seen as a safe pick who would bring balance to a Department still rocked by the Comey firing, the revelation of the Strozk texts, and under attack from the radical right led by Congressmen Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, and the President himself.  Barr would be the “adult” at the head of the Department.

But Barr’s actions in the Iran/Contra Affair, and his nineteen page memo to the White House should have been the “tell.” Democratic Senators in the Judiciary Committee tried to make that point in questioning Barr, but he was adroit in the testifying skills of dodging and obfuscating.  And many depended on Barr’s friendship with Mueller, reminiscent of Watergate days when Attorney General Bill Saxbe and Prosecutor Leon Jaworski testified side by side to the Congress.

But whatever that friendship signified, it didn’t apply to “business” when it came to Attorney General Barr.  His mischaracterization of the Mueller Report with a four-page summary that “cleared the President of any wrong-doing” allowed the Trump forces three weeks to press a false narrative of Presidential innocence. Mueller’s own protests, including a letter to the Attorney General that Barr summarized as “snitty,” came out this week, but Barr has consistently defended his own false interpretation of the clear language of the now public Mueller document.

Mueller outlines ten possible lines of obstruction of justice charges against President Trump.  Barr dismisses them all, not on the facts, but on his own interpretation that the President has the right to protect his own innocence, by disrupting any investigation into himself.  Barr seemed completely oblivious to the possibility that a guilty President might protect himself through obstruction.  He places the President beyond the purview of Justice Department inquiry, saying:  “ …the Department of Justice is out…there’s an election in 18 months.” 

In 1992, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh warned us that Barr believed that some were above the law.  In his statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Barr made it clear that he absolutely regards the President in that way, subject only to election or presumably Congressional impeachment.  

Bill Barr has returned to public service, not to stabilize the institution of the Department of Justice, but to serve as President Trump’s “protector-in-chief” from legal attack.  He has brought a radical view of Presidential power to the highest law enforcement office in the land, one that prevents any check on Presidential actions.  And now, he is participating in a “stonewalling” operation by the executive branch, refusing to give any information to the Congress.

He is doing the political bidding of the White House and the President.  They have determined that it is to their advantage to force the House of Representatives to openly impeach Donald Trump; their only remaining action that can force the White House to produce information.  Bill Barr, the Attorney General, has chosen to become Donald Trump’s “Roy Cohn.”  That will be his historic legacy.