Barr: The most dangerous man in politics?

Attorney General William Barr “has gone too far before, but never this far,” said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. Last week, Barr reportedly pushed federal prosecutors to consider charging violent protesters with “seditious conspiracy”— the rarely invoked crime of attempting to “overthrow” the government. He also has explored whether the Justice Department could file criminal or civil charges against the Democratic mayors of Seattle and Portland for allowing persistent protests. The Justice Department actually did designate Seattle, New York City, and Portland as “anarchist jurisdictions” and said they could have their federal funding cut off. In a speech at conservative Hillsdale College, Barr mocked the Justice Department’s tradition of letting prosecutors work independently, saying it “might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool.” He also claimed that “other than slavery,” pandemic restrictions are “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.” Really?

Barr’s speech was an easy target for “partisan distortions,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. In truth, Barr argued that “the awesome power of prosecutors” must be checked by senior officials appointed by an elected president and confirmed by the Senate. The Left, on the other hand, seems to believe “that career prosecutors ought to have free rein” to throw the book at their political enemies, as long as they’re part of “the Resistance” to President Trump. There’s also nothing outrageous in Barr’s idea of charging protesters with sedition, said Andrew McCarthy in NationalReview.com. “Anti-American radicals” are rioting, torching government buildings, and attacking police officers. Sounds like a plot to “use force against the government,” doesn’t it?

Barr’s agenda is clear, said Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com. He wants Americans to fear “an enemy within” so they’ll back authoritarian crackdowns. He’s also openly laying a foundation to challenge the results of the election, saying that mail-in voting will allow “selling and buying votes,” suggesting that postal workers will be paid to destroy ballots. If Trump appears to have won a state,

Barr said, Democrats will announce, “Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots.” Barr is “the most dangerous man in American politics,” said Michael Cohen in The Boston Globe. “He understands how the levers of the federal government work.” In his flagrantly partisan efforts to keep Trump in office, “what line won’t he cross?”