A bad lawyer — and a bad liar
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is a deplorable person, always has been. Worse, at least in the eyes of Washington, is that he’s a poor lawyer. Only the most foolish attorney would brazenly lie to House and Senate committees while knowing that evidence proving he was lying was in his possession, on paper.
Barr said on April 10 that special counsel Robert Mueller hadn’t objected to his dismissive conclusion that the Mueller report “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or co-ordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” This was cherry-picking from a voluminous report.
In fact, Mueller had already sent two letters to Barr and phoned him directly to lay out his objections to Barr’s artful dismissals of the report.
When news about Mueller’s anger was revealed by journalists, Barr told the committee that he didn’t know what Mueller had thought about the matter. But when the redacted Mueller report was finally released on April 18, it was painfully clear that Barr had lied.
As the CBC’s Keith Boag and others who read political history have quietly pointed out, Barr, in police slang, has “previous.” He helped cover up the secret arms-dealing Irancontra Affair in 1992 in the service of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
As Boag writes, “Barr, in his first appointment as attorney general, strenuously and successfully advocated pardons for key players, including defence secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose testimony might otherwise have implicated Bush, Barr’s boss.” Thirty-five years later, he is again living up to his old nickname, “Cover-up Barr.”
It is instructive to watch someone who grovelled before a criminal and senile president for the chance to tell a brazen lie under oath. Last Wednesday, Barr claimed that he had thought Mueller’s team, not Mueller himself, was complaining, and he knew nothing of that team. One senator called that “masterful hairsplitting,” but as legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said on CNN, you can’t split hairs if there is no hair to split.
We see it in American legal dramas all the time, Hollywood being literal rather than suggestive, when the audience is spoon-fed the lying witness’s backstory. The witness has a week to live and doesn’t care. The witness’s family is being held hostage in a bunker. The witness is being sexually blackmailed. The witness is a piece of work.
In this case, the witness believes Donald Trump will always be president, that Republican senators will never waver and that he’s safe.
He’s betting on Trump. That’s why he refused to attend the House hearing on Thursday, and may be subpoenaed to attend. If he fails to obey and the law isn’t enforced, that’s where the structure of democratic government truly begins crumbling. It’s a bit … Venezuela, a nation in free fall.
It is possible that Barr, terrified of crossing Trump, simply panicked.
The amusing bit was watching media and Democratic politicians struggle not to use the word “lie.” Though Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he was lying, others politely said he was “purposefully misleading” or “not honest.”
These timid people were making the same mistake that Mueller did, following traditional political norms and adhering to ethical and legal rules, which under normal circumstances would be rational.
But Trump is not normal. Nothing about his appearance, speech, family, business, intellect, cronies, world view and mental health is normal for an American president or even a next-door neighbour. He has broken almost every norm of civilized behaviour.
Norms are one thing. Laws are another.
The Trump administration is blocking subpoenas from the House judiciary committee for the unredacted Mueller report, the oversight committee for his business records, the ways and means committee for his tax returns, and so on.
So what? If the House threatens criminal contempt, the Department of Justice under Barr won’t prosecute, writes Washington journalist Max Boot.
Suing to enforce those subpoenas will take years. The rule of law has broken down with the Republican refusal to enforce it.
Boot says the 2020 election will be a referendum on whether the U.S. remains a rule-of-law republic. Who knew a centuries-old legal structure could start shedding masonry so quickly while under attack by vandals.
Trump is always himself. The real vandals are the Republican senators backing Trump at the cost of their reputations, their voters and the country they have discarded.
Trump has a trick in mind for 2020. Did you really think a man so weak-minded would leave without a war?
He hopes to invade Venezuela — strange how his enemies always have brown skin — and like Margaret Thatcher and her silly Falklands War, will win in 2020.
Americans do love their wars, especially when there’s no draft, just an indentured impoverished army bleeding and dying for nothing. Once again, the U.S. will probe its own deep emotional wound, repeat its mistakes, and know not why.