Barr: Declaring war on Trump’s opponents
Soon after he was confirmed, Attorney General William Barr shocked even “erstwhile supporters with his aggressive and frequently dishonest interventions on behalf of President Trump,” said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. But now we know “how far over the edge Barr has gone.”
In an interview with CBS last week, Barr went “full MAGA,” throwing his support behind the right-wing conspiracy theory that a cabal of rabid Trump haters at the FBI launched the Russia investigation to undermine his presidency. In an even more astonishing moment, Barr calmly stated he saw “no evidence” that Trump has been undermining democratic norms and “shredding our institutions.” The real threat to our norms, Barr said, is coming from Trump’s opponents, who are “resisting a democratically elected president.” Barr left no doubt about it, said William Saletan in Slate.com. The U.S. attorney general is a committed “agent of President Donald Trump.”
“The AG is taking flak because he’s asking questions that others won’t,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. But Barr is totally justified in seeking answers as to why the FBI spied on an American presidential campaign. Entrenched government officials, he correctly pointed out, can arrogantly “identify the national interest with their own political preferences” and seek to supersede “the will of the majority.” At 69, with retirement beckoning—he gave his interview in fishing gear in front of a crackling fireplace—Barr is the Washington establishment’s “worst nightmare,” said David Catron in Spectator.org. Nothing scares the denizens of the district like “an honest man who doesn’t give a damn what they think of him.”
Honest? asked Philip Bump in WashingtonPost .com. Barr also made the “simply indefensible” claim that special counsel Robert Mueller found “no evidence” of the “bogus” claim that the Trump campaign “was in cahoots with Russia.” In truth, Mueller’s report details more than 100 secret contacts between Trump staffers and Russia, including Paul Manafort’s still-unexplained gift of U.S. polling data to an agent of the Kremlin. Barr may honestly believe he needs to clean house at the FBI to restore public trust in our institutions, said Jack Goldsmith in Lawfareblog .com. But as attorney general, Barr is one of those institutions himself. By distorting Mueller’s conclusions, and appearing to prejudge the results of his FBI investigation, Barr has “severely undermined what was left of his credibility.”