Barr urged to resign after ‘assaulting the rule of law’ over Flynn case
MORE than 1,900 former Justice Department employees have repeated a call for William Barr to step down as US attorney general, asserting in an open letter he had “once again assaulted the rule of law” by moving to drop the case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The letter, organised by the nonprofit Protect Democracy, was signed by Justice Department staffers serving in Republican and Democratic administrations dating back to president Eisenhower.
The vast majority were former career staffers – rather than political appointees – who worked as federal prosecutors or supervisors at US Attorney Offices across the country or the Justice Department in Washington DC.
Protect Democracy, which counts Justice Department alumni among its members, has organised several similar letters critical of Mr Barr’s decisions or other Trump administration actions. In February, the group collected more than 2,600 signatures on a letter calling for Mr Barr to resign after he intervened to reduce career prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime friend of Mr Trump.
Jonathan Kravis, one of the prosecutors involved in Stone’s case who resigned after Mr Barr’s action, wrote in a ‘Washington Post’ column yesterday that in both matters, “the department undercut the work of career employees to protect an ally of the president, an abdication of the commitment to equal justice under the law”.
The new letter asserted that its signers “continue to believe that it would be best for the integrity of the Justice Department and for our democracy for Attorney General Barr to step aside”.
The group also called on Congress to formally censure Mr Barr and asked a federal judge to hold a hearing to scrutinise whether to dismiss