Way back in February, I gave Attorney General William Barr a tiny compliment for publicly complaining that Donald Trump was interfering in the work of the Justice Department in ways that “make it impossible for me to do my job.” Barr also pledged that he was “not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” including, he seemed to imply, the president.
The headline on that piece, “Let’s give Barr the credit he’s due for sort of standing up to Trump,” wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence, but an effort to take note of a rare example of anyone in Trumpland pushing back on anything Trump said or did.
Over the ensuing months, I decided I was wrong. Barr seemed utterly servile to Trump, and lent the credibility he had built up over a long career in government service to nothing but aiding and abetting Trump, often in what appeared to be highly questionable abuse of the Justice Department to help Trump and his cronies and punish or intimidate Trump’s critics and foes. I still think it’s best to assume that Trump demands, and generally receives, total obedience, even to the point of lying or cheating for him, from all his minions, and he gets roughly that level of obedience from Barr. I don’t claim to understand why.
My dear friend and long-time colleague Tom Hamburger, now of the Washington Post, is late in the process of profiling Barr. The piece, I gather, is in the hands of the editors and could appear any day.
But Hamburger sat Monday for a long interview/conversation with professor Larry Jacobs of the University of Minnesota and former Vice President Walter Mondale. I was in the audience, via Zoom, and learned a lot of what Tom has found in researching the Barr profile, which included a long interview with Barr. By the end I found myself still wondering whether Barr is anything but an obedient Trump enabler who puts loyalty to Trump ahead of all else.
I haven’t read any drafts of the unpublished profile, but after listening to the Hamburger-Mondale-Jacobs discussion, it appears that Hamburger, too, is open to believing that Barr is committed to some higher authorities than Trump, namely God (as seen by Catholics, including Barr).
But Barr also subscribes to a long-articulated but fairly extreme view of presidential power, sometimes dubbed the “unitary executive theory.”
A Washington veteran, Barr has held many Justice Department positions in the past and served previously as attorney general. Mondale said yesterday he remembers a time when Barr’s reputation was as “a moderate, not a right-winger.” But, since returning to lead the Justice Department under Trump, Mondale commented yesterday, “he had a bad start, and he seems in no rush to get over that.”
Barr came back to the attorney generalship after Trump’s first lickspittle choice, Jeff Session, was insufficiently obedient to the boss. Despite being a Trump toady, Sessions apparently believed an old notion that attorneys general were supposed to have some loyalty to the law that was higher than their loyalty to the president. One of the continuing mysteries about Barr is where he stands on that issue.
Hamburger said yesterday that in his interview with the attorney general he explicitly asked Barr, who is deeply religious, how someone who attaches as much importance to morality can work for Trump, who so often seems amoral.
He told the U of M audience that Barr replied: “All people are flawed, and no one is perfect.”
By the way, if you’re wondering what someone in Barr’s position might be able to do to help Trump get reelected, keep your eye on what’s called the “Durham investigation,” named for U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham has been conducting a very secret and convoluted investigation into activities that Trump supporters believe may have constituted improper efforts by Democrats during 2016 to use the Justice Department to get dirt on Trump before he was elected.
That investigation is ongoing within Barr’s Justice Department, and could be fodder for an “October surprise” if Trump thinks he needs one. It’s too convoluted to go into here, but it came up in the Hamburger forum.
Trump himself has tweeted about the investigation, implying that important political dirt that will help him get reelected is being dug up.
Durham’s top deputy recently resigned, complaining about undue political pressure being applied by Barr to produce results prematurely, perhaps, some suspect, to help Trump before the election. Keep your eye on that one.
A few other outtakes from the CSPG seminar with my old buddy:
Hamburger also discussed the controversy around Barr’s handling of the public release of the Robert Mueller report. Before releasing Mueller’s full report, Barr released a so-called “summary” of it, which was widely criticized as biased in favor of a view that the report exonerated Trump of any wrongdoing, which it did not.
Hamburger also alluded to the possibility that efforts continue from within Barr’s Justice Department to contribute to Trump’s campaign to undermine confidence in mail-in voting.
He also reviewed various Justice Department actions viewed by critics as political favors to Trump, such as intervening to get more lenient treatment toward Trump’s allies, like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, but harsher treatment of those who have turned on Trump, like Michael Cohen.
WaPost piece is up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/09/15/william-barr-president-trump-perfect-match/
Today we have an attorney general who will protect trump…no matter what he says or does…and a repub senate that also will not hold him accountable…and in my opinion we are in serious danger of losing our democracy.
Agreed. The Dump continues to solidify support in enough key places that he may well put himself beyond reach. He continues to draw people willing to do his bidding, and no amount of lies or legal concerns or levels of immorality or unthinkably outrageous behaviors change the minds of people who see in him their own savior. Democracy is very much in danger here, and it is no longer enough to console ourselves that the blood will be on their hands when our experiment in democracy comes crashing to the ground, because we will go with it.
I find the images of the French Revolution’s anarchy creeping into my mind quite unsolicited and it is deeply unsettling, and no longer a distant fear or overreaction to the ebb and flow of politics. We are straying beyond that now.
Hitler is said to have muttered, “The masses are asses” and, try as I might as I follow the news of the day, I have never convincingly disproved that notion.
1- The worst things done to me in my lifetime were done by folks claiming to be ‘religious’. And my case is not an isolated one. Across the land many folks–Catholics, Christians, Evangelists and more–claim to adhere to religion but their actions constantly belie their claims. 2 – Barr is actually worse than Trump, to whom he publicly pledged fealty. Because he is a lawyer, and an Attn Gen, and now the country’s top lawyer. So he should certainly know our laws well. Yet daily he breaks them and allows Trump to as well. Because they share an ideology. Their sworn oaths of office and pledges to protect the people be damned. Why so many folks continue to give either or both the benefit of the doubt one second longer defies logic. They have both proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that truth, honesty and our laws mean nothing to them. They have made clear they will say &/or do anything they can think of to rig the election, disrupt the processes and accept help in any form from hostile foreign despots. So remove them from office! Early voting is about to begin in some states; mask up and vote early. Do NOT mail in ballots this time; the Post Office has been compromised. How do we know this? As usual: they’ve TOLD US. Wake up, America. Stopped being duped. Stop being complacent. You know what’s next, besides another attempt to gut healthcare? Ending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid! The destruction will be complete then. The REPs think they’ll destroy the DEMs. NO. They’ll destroy the country.
Hiding behind religious faith, in Barr’s case Catholicism, is the one sh*t the f*ck up trick up every criminal’s sleeve. He’s right up there with Falwell and Reed. Don’t buy it, readers. November can’t come soon enough.
The giveaway is where Barr is described as ‘Trump’s Attorney General’.
He is supposed to be the United States Attorney General, not Trump’s personal defense counsel.
Maybe the writer of this article completely forgot about the attorney General for President Obama.
Mr. Holder said the following concerning his relationship with the President.
“I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, there’s still work to be done. I’m still the president’s wingman, so I’m there with my boy. So we’ll see,” (Washington Post)
Of course – President Kennedy had his brother as AG.
TBTF – Too Big To Fail.
Translation – there is the law for the masses, and then there are bankers and CEO’s who are our great benefactors and cannot be held accountable for anything at all because they maintain the life we have grown accustomed to.
Bankers and CEO’s get the keys to the kingdom, Occupy Wall Street got “justice”.
Meanwhile all the liberals here are worried now about “democracy”?
False equivalence redux.
How did Holder and Obama treat the press? From the AP Fact Check:
The Obama administration used the 1917 Espionage Act with unprecedented vigor, prosecuting more people under that law for leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous administrations combined. Obama’s Justice Department dug into confidential communications between news organizations and their sources as part of that effort.
In 2013 the Obama administration obtained the records of 20 Associated Press office phone lines and reporters’ home and cell phones, seizing them without notice, as part of an investigation into the disclosure of information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot.
AP was not the target of the investigation. But it called the seizure a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its news-gathering activities, betraying information about its operations “that the government has no conceivable right to know.”
Obama’s Justice Department also secretly dogged Fox News journalist James Rosen, getting his phone records, tracking his arrivals and departures at the State Department through his security-badge use, obtaining a search warrant to see his personal emails and naming him as a possible criminal conspirator in the investigation of a news leak.
“The Obama administration,” The New York Times editorial board wrote at the time, “has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”
https://apnews.com/ffc60235c26c470c9047e0da6ff19f95/AP-FACT-CHECK:-Obama-doesn%2527t-always-tell-the-straight-story
And I forgot to mention – the same arguments Obama and Holder used to prosecute whistleblowers with the Espionage Act are being used in the Assange Trial by Barr’s Justice Department. (Our media in America won’t even report on it, even as it is a direct attack by Barr on the freedom of the press – but then our media isn’t press as much as it is for-profit infotainment and quasi-State propaganda.)
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-10/
“as part of an investigation into the disclosure of information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot.”
As opposed to a plot to embarrass the President by revealing details of what he did that might be illegal.
So, that they did something illegal, spying on the press, it’s ok because it’s not as bad as Trump calling the press fake news?
It could very well be argued that the reason the Obama Justice Department used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers was about Obama protecting himself from the embarrassment of his drone bombing program, etc unaccountable war on terror.
Now I’m wondering, if Trump were to make it legal for the State to kill American citizens without a trial, what kind of response would that get from Liberal Democrats? Except it is legal for Trump to kill American Citizens, because Obama made it legal.
Another “wuddabout?”
Are you a religious man, Mr. Gotzman? If so, you might reflect on how we are judged for our actions. We are judged based on what we did, and deflecting attention to someone else’s supposed misdeeds (and deeds matter more than words) does not erase our own sins.
Should Biden win and his AG acts like Barr/Holder and we call out the elite corruption, will you be like “wuddabout Barr! Barr! Barr!”, or will you be like “What corruption? It is all the Republicans!”
I know if I ever meet my “maker”, I can say I called out corruption no matter who was in power…even when all it ever got me was called a sinner.
That’s nice. You’re a moral exemplar for us all.
Do you have an sense of history and historical context, Mr. Holbrook?
Mentioning Mr. Holder and Mr. Kennedy adds historical perspective to the current debate.
I said nothing about Trump. It seems you are the one who is consumed with Trump.
Appreciate history for history, please. It will broaden your perspective.
[I got a response from Mr. Gotzman! There’s a first!]
Mentioning Mr. Holder and Mr. Kennedy is a classic red herring, albeit a very poor one. There was nothing unlawful about the appointment of RFK as Attorney General. Nepotism in federal appointments was not unlawful until 1967. He served a long time ago, and I’m sure that if I had known about his singular lack of independence at the time, I would have opposed him. Six year-old me just didn’t have that same ethical sense.
Mr. Holder made his remarks in the context of a radio interview that asked if he was going to stay on as Attorney General in Obama’s second term. I know that anything done by the servants of the Islamo-fascist Kenyan usurper is by definition evil, but that one quote is no evidence that there is any comparison between him and Barr.
And I did not mention Trump, although speaking of judgment for one’s sins might naturally bring him to mind.
Response? I respond all the time. It is just this response was allowed!
I wish you could have read the many other responses. In fact – my original post to this article was not even allowed, although very similar to the allowed post.
However – anticipating your responses to my allowed posts and trying to guess new name calling outburst for the POTUS on MINNPOST is a favorite recreation of mine.
At least if you cannot keep me informed you keep me entertained. Thank you.
You’re very welcome. We all have our roles to play.
“At least if you cannot keep me informed you keep me entertained.” I would make a Fox News crack here, but that would be too obvious.
Trump is the current President, not Obama.
Yes, they were part of the Executive branch, and worked with the President.
But what did they DO that fell under the heading of working to defend the President against criminal charges?
Actions speak, and all that.
Man, this is some weak sauce, Ron. Who dug up that (meaningless) Holder quote?
And Kennedy’s selection of his brother for AG was not viewed as desirable, and is not a celebrated aspect of his presidency. Of course, you’d have to actually document some notable improprieties by Robert K to go along with the observation in order to compare him to the horrendous Barr. I’m sure some “conservative” media has done that somewhere….
The truth is that there is no precedent for Barr’s extreme partisan behavior in modern history. He’s making a mockery of the office and its duties, as hundreds of ex-DOJ officials have explained. You don’t care, of course, but that’s the reality.
Good point, Ron. The AG serves the president, in a manner of speaking. But he serves the president in the interests of the citizens, his (and the president’s) ultimate client. But the larger question here pertains to legality. Is the AG serving the greatest interests of the citizens or is he cherry picking (or downright breaking) the law in order to meet the whims of the president?
I think you can agree that, to be generous, this president bends every law he wants to if he wants to and when he wants to. It is very difficult to make a convincing argument that this president is serving the interests of the people when he routinely lambasts large portions of the population, pits one group against another, and seems neither aware nor respectful of the office he holds. So the question as to whether the current AG is acting legally and morally is very much an open question, worthy of discussion.
Look up the Oath of Office.
Are you referring to the justice department that delivered the October surprise about Clinton, but never divulged the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to wikileaks and Russia?
Is it your position that the Holder DOJ is somehow comparable to the Barr DOJ that drops charges against criminals who’ve pled guilty; and chooses to defend the President in a private lawsuit for his claims that he didn’t rape a woman 20-some years ago?
One explanation is that old white men like Barr (and “Justice” Scalia for that matter) became increasingly radicalized over time by daily consumption of increasingly radicalized “conservative” news and total disdain of “lib’rul MSM”. (Trump himself is now an open sewer of rightwing conspiracy theories of the most cretinous character.) Just because Barr and Scalia were raised as white elites with every possible Ivy League degree and granted the honor of highly responsible government experience doesn’t mean they were/are unaffected by mendacious rightwing authoritarian propaganda. Goebbels knew this.
If the explanation for Barr’s highly unethical and unprecedented behavior is “deeply held Catholicism”, that’s especially improper as he shouldn’t be allowing sectarian allegiance or belief to have any part of his law enforcement decision making.
An anti-democratic authoritarian strongman who disdains the constraints of the law obviously needs to have total control of the law enforcement machinery. This is the reason we have attempted to insulate the Attorney General from being an open tool of political partisanship and instead be an apolitical official (and office) that serves ALL the people. Barr has dispensed with this to an unprecedented degree, and his conduct in office will have to be investigated in future to determine its actual legality. Why he was willing to destroy his reputation for this political criminal and human monster is a question that would need to be formally addressed, should American democracy survive to have its version of the Nuremberg trials.
I have a feeling this conversation will soon move on to Durham. Results favorable to Democrats will ultimately determine his honesty.
It is quite a curious America we live in, when a person’s “honesty” is dependent upon them reinforcing a political bias…
I for one tend to think many people in govt during the end of the Obama Admin acted unethically, illegally and undemocratically, in an attempt to undermine who they perceived as an illegitamate President. Unethical, illegal and undemocratic, as we have seen on both “sides”, can become “honest” to the true believer.
“I for one tend to think..”
Understood.
But then you studiously refuse to credit (let alone understand) either the Mueller Report, or the various (unanimous) Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the matter. While turning a blind eye to the uncontoverted evidence in Trump’s senate trial. So your opinion is governed largely by emotion, not evidence.
My read on the Mueller report and the Senate report is that it is a lot of weak sauce that was never going to be the bombshell/smoking gun/end of this President, highly emotional liberal democrats made and make it out to be. Rather, it mostly serves as another propaganda bit in the State’s war against Russia, the crown jewel in long-time regime change doctrine.
It is a lot like that story about Russian bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. A story to end a President. Except a month later in even the Military admits there was never any actual evidence – just some statements by unknown “intelligence officials”.
Or the Woodward tapes. They are like an emotional draw-string. If you hate this president it is validation for your hatred. To those of us who are not emotional about Presidential politics, it just looks like, here we are, almost at the election, and they are still trying to remove this president using the same tactics they have used for 4 years.
What are Biden’s policies, exactly? Or is that too about emotion and evidence does not matter?
Also BK, the impeachment was a show trial, not a real one, and Liberal Dems looked just as ugly and grandstanding as this President.
As for unethical, illegal, undemocratic behavior, it is like both sides in their righteousness think they need to one-up the other to get the upper hand. That is the insanity of war. Everybody’s doing it. Except count me as a civilian, thanks.
“a show trial, not a real one…”
Well, to the extent that Trump’s Impeachment trial in the (Repub) senate did not have live witnesses, that was wholly the doing of the perp’s political party protecting him, at his request. But there was plenty of (uncontroverted) testimony, and the perp had the right to present whatever he wanted to present. So you either don’t know what “show trial” means or you desperately want to believe something that’s simply false.
In your extreme “open-mindedness” about the equal complicity of the two major parties in America, I’m reminded of an observation made by a climate scientist to an avowed global warming skeptic: “It’s great to approach things with an open mind, but don’t keep your mind so open that your brain falls out”….
The danger with a Trump has always been the race against the clock. Fascists will always seek to surround themselves with other Fascists, and while it’s taken Trump several years to reach that goal, he’s clearly reached it in the 3rd year of his presidency. He and his “advisors” have finally managed to populate almost his entire administration with “loyalists”.
Months ago the White House implemented a policy of requiring loyalty tests to anyone who would work or enter the White House in order to work there (other than the press, but I’m sure that’s on agenda for the second term). I know government workers who won’t take positions involving WH access because they refuse to submit to these loyalty tests, just think about that for a few second- this happening right now. No one with any integrity or commitment to the US Constitution is left at the head any federal agency anywhere in this administration (with the exception of a few hold-outs involved with COVID 19). If you’re just waking up to this fact now, you need to do a better job of paying attention.
Where do Barr’s loyalties lie? His summary of the Meuller Report made that perfectly clear when he started the job. If you gave him the benefit of the doubt after that, you weren’t being “fair” you were practicing denial. We don’t need a couple guys at the U. to tell us what it means to have a Fascist Trump loyalist for an AG. THAT conversation should have happened years ago because it was an obvious objective even before Trump took office.
I was listening to a Yale professor on NPR after I came out of the Boundary Waters recently, who wrote a book on all things fascist. It became clear in his talk however, that the only fascists he could see were all connected to Trump. It was like he could only see the macho, stupid kind of fascism. He defined fascism as the State using it’s power to crush dissent among the people. He pointed at Trump’s handling of riots. Presumably however it didn’t count when the State under Obama crushed Occupy Wall Street.
He left out the bit, or doesn’t acknowledge it, about the unification of the State and Corporations with designs on imperial hegemony. So it seems like we have a choice between the raw, ugly, brutal, stupid kind, and a fascism more refined and civilized.
How did Obama “crush” Occupy Wall Street?
Did he send in federal troops to clear the protesters out?
Did he call on supporters to confront them with violence?
Did Attorney General Holder advocate prosecuting protester under the sedition laws?
Occupy Wall Street was, as I recall, addressed largely – if not entirely – by local authorities. As much as your reflexes call on you to blame Obama and deflect attention from the antics of the Great Helmsman, you’re going to need a better example.
They were called “fusion centers”, where Homeland Security, the FBI, and local law enforcement gathered to exchange information. Most encampments in many cities were forcibly dismantled, with the same tactics we saw recently. Trump recently praised the brutal takedown of the New York Occupy encampment:
“A New York real estate executive based in Manhattan back then, Trump recalled to the governors how the violent, coordinated nationwide police crackdown on a wholly and conscientiously peaceful protest moment had begun. Referring first to the current uprisings led by Black Lives Matter, he said almost wistfully:
“This is like Occupy Wall Street. It was a disaster until one day somebody said, ‘That’s enough.’ And they just went in and wiped them out. And it’s the last time I heard the name Occupy Wall Street… They [had] closed Wall Street, the financial district of the world! And they had total domination… Nobody did anything. And then one day somebody said, ‘That’s enough. You get them out of here within two hours.’ And it was bedlam for an hour. Then after that, everything was beautiful.”
“What the president described as “beautiful,” had actually been intentionally brutal, with police and mayors in 18 cities sharing advice on how to destroy the Occupy Movement in their cities – advice that included using maximum force and brutality, night raids, militarized weapons like rubber bullets, bean-bag projectiles, tear gas and pepper spray, batons, sound cannons and flash-bang grenades.”
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/494309-blm-occupy-obama-trump/
As to the “Great Helmsman”, RB, I’m pretty sure I referred to him as “raw, ugly, brutal and stupid.”
An apt description of the original “Great Helmsman” as well.
And after doing a little more looking, I see that the FBI did coordinate the overly violent responses of local law enforcement. This is surprising, because at least publicly, Obama seemed to sympathize with the movement.
That is the genius of Obama. He talks like he cares and many people believe him. But his actions were always in favor of Wall Street, at the expense of regular people.
Yeah, remember back in 2015-15 when all these historians and political scientists assured us that Trump was no Fascist? History may record the colossal academic failure to recognize something that was so obvious to so so many others.
Part of the problem is that historians and “experts” on Fascism tended to model their analysis on Hitler and Mussolini as if an American Fascist had to conform THAT example. Now these guys are finally realizing that an American Fascism will be it’s own flavor, and emerge with a different appearance. When you see Trump demanding payment from Oracle in exchange for its tic-toc deal you begin to see that impulse to unify State and Corporation.
Well, when Obama emerged from his political isolation to do battle with Bernie Sanders instead of Trump, THAT tells you something about Democratic establishment he supports. Remember, when he emerged from silence, it wasn’t to denounce Fascism, it was to denounce being “woke”. This is how Fascism gained it foothold in America, Democrats were to busy suppressing liberalism to notice their friends on the other side of the isle had become monsters.