Barr puts distinguished reputation on line for Trump
Donald Trump famously complained in September 2018, “I don’t have an Attorney General,” referencing the former occupant of the position, Jeff Sessions, who much to Trump’s dismay and outrage, had recused himself from the Russia investigation. Sessions’ recusal, which Trump asserted he should have made him aware of before accepting the nomination, bought him Trump’s eternal contempt and repeated public humiliation, Trump going so far as to mock Sessions’ Southern accent before an adoring crowd.
William Barr has obviously acted so as to ensure that he serves as the president’s personal Attorney General, never to incur his wrath and scorn.
It began when Barr wrote a memorandum challenging the Mueller investigation, making it clear that he stood for an all-powerful executive branch of the government.
The Attorney General William Barr who served honorably in the George H. W. Bush administration is now unrecognizable. He has tilted the scales of justice to the president. He released the Mueller report to the White House in advance of his press conference to speak about it, and as he was addressing it, members of Congress could only guess at what was in it as he did not release it to them and to the public until later that day. The press conference was announced not by Barr or a Justice Department spokesperson, but by the president for whom there is a thumb on the scale. Barr sugar-coated the report to render the most benign conclusions of the president’s unethical, if not unlawful actions and behavior, and his conclusions are clearly at odds with those reached by the Independent Counsel.
The Attorney General told us that Trump cooperated in the investigation, to which a reasonable and objective individual would respond, “Beg pardon?” How is the president seen as having cooperated when he sought at every turn to scuttle the investigation, condemning it countless times, refusing to be interviewed by Director Mueller, and having directed that the Independent Counsel be fired?
Trump and his sycophants, of course, cherry-pick the report and rely on Barr’s slanted conclusions in claiming “total exoneration”: “game over” as the president said: not so fast. The report in no way clears the president whose lack of veracity is demonstrated in his repeated assertions that no one involved in the leadership of his presidential campaign had anything to do with Russia.
William Barr has had a long and distinguished career. He now chooses to shred his reputation by striving at all costs to avoid being seen by the president as a disloyal Attorney General. The Trump Justice Department does not serve the people. As the president would say, “Sad!”
Oren Spiegler
South Strabane Township