Here comes the investigation into William Barr
It’s surprising that some on the highly secretive Mueller team have become emboldened to accuse Attorney General William Barr of making dishonest statements about the Mueller report. The fact that Barr did this in the first place, however, should not have been a surprise at all. The upshot? He’s going to end up in the same place as the rest of Trump’s lackeys.
James Comey called Barr an “institutionalist,” which was intended to attest to his alleged scrupulous nature. A former colleague who worked under Barr during his first stint as AG called him “a strong person of principle.” He’s been called everything from conventional to a boy scout, but deep down, he’s always been a sordid swamp creature. The ACLU points out that Barr rubber stamped racial profiling, promoted the idea of secret military trials, encouraged abuses of executive power, and endorsed denying asylum seekers their rights.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you he’s a rampaging asshole, he famously supported President George H. W. Bush’s clemency for some patently guilty folks caught up in the Iran-Contra affair, in essence letting some of his fellow beltway golf buddies keep their tee times without having to deal with prison or other annoying mechanisms of the justice system. He was a Trumpian dirtbag before it was de rigueur.
Decades later, Barr found himself the perfect exercise in boosting his ego: writing a thoroughly gratuitous nineteen-page missive several months ago on the world’s stupidest reason for why the president couldn’t have obstructed justice. Of course, this had a predictably ingratiating effect on Trump and voila, now he’s Attorney General. Barr probably figured that he could just act his usual swamp creature self and steamroll any bad news for Trump without a hitch. Enter hitch: Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats. It’s being reported that some Democrats are interested in learning about whether Barr himself obstructed justice, which of course he did.
Barr deliberately tried to hide the Mueller team’s findings and poison the well of public opinion in favor of Trump by announcing first that there was no collusion. Anyone who’s been even vaguely aware of the news knows that’s hogwash. Barr has had to formally backtrack in letters to Congress and, consequently, seems to be trying to back himself out of this one. The only problem is that you can’t take a mulligan with Nancy Pelosi.
If the Democrats decide to investigate Barr, they’re going to come to the conclusion that it was his intent to deliberately misrepresent Mueller’s findings in an attempt to favor Trump’s legal standing, by impeding the actions of the House of Representatives, and improperly and corruptly influencing public opinion. You should have stayed at home, Barr.
Democracy thrives in snarkiness