William Barr's Slick Performance Shouldn't Fool Anyone

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/01/william-barr-attorney-general-hearing-mueller-recuse.html

William Barr’s Slick Performance Shouldn’t Fool Anyone
He needs to recuse from the Mueller probe.
By Andrew Cohen
Jan 15, 2019
1:25 PM


William Barr, the former and likely future attorney general, the wizened Washington pro, the epic pro-pardon guy, came to Capitol Hill on Tuesday and used his vast repertoire of pretty words to try to reassure the Senate Judiciary Committee, and an anxious nation, that he will be “independent” and principled if and when he takes over the Justice Department again. It was a bravura performance. Nothing fancy. Nothing alarming. Somber. Sober. But nothing he said—and nothing he can say now—should spare Barr from being forced to recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller investigation after the stunt he pulled last summer with a dubious memo questioning that probe’s power to investigate potential obstruction of justice by the president.

snip//

But when it comes to the Russia investigation, which will be the single most important part of Barr’s portfolio in the months to come, the memo is patently disqualifying. It’s not a close call, and in this case, as in most cases, it’s important to focus on context. In his prepared remarks, and again on Tuesday, Barr tried to discount the range and significance of the memo even though we are talking about, after all, a president under credible investigation for criminal conduct. Reasonable people can and have argued over what the memo means, and what it doesn’t mean, and it’s in Barr’s interest to argue, now, that his analysis was limited and not intended to cause trouble for Mueller.

Except that doesn’t ring true. Barr didn’t write the memo as some sort of academic exercise or to satisfy his own vanity. He didn’t write it at the request of a newspaper, or magazine, or law review. He says he wrote it because he felt he had something important to say, to DOJ and White House officials, about how the Mueller investigation was unfolding. He wrote it as a partisan brief, a partisan affair, to curry favor with the White House, and we know that because we now know that Barr made sure the president and his men were made aware of what he had written. Barr knew that his expansive view of presidential power would delight the most authoritarian president ever. It was a job application, no matter how many times he denied it on Tuesday. Maybe for White House counsel. Maybe for attorney general. Maybe for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Most of the attention during the hearing is and will continue be on Barr’s view toward Mueller, and in an ironic way that will shield from more public view the many other substantive reasons why Barr will be a disaster at the Justice Department. Barr helped invent mass incarceration, for example. Are we really supposed to believe he’s going to help reverse it now in his charge of implementing the brand-new bipartisan criminal justice reform law? Why should anyone believe he is going to turn the department again into an institution that fights for and not against voting rights? How is Barr’s view of presidential power going to translate into checks on the administration’s immoral and disastrous immigration policy? What about the Trump family’s graft and the Emoluments Clause? What about how Barr might defend a president who has claimed the authority to usurp the Constitution’s clear delineation of powers by claiming a phony national emergency, another query he ducked during the early questioning? And so on.

You can believe what Barr wrote and said this week with his nomination on the line, or you can believe what he wrote last summer about Robert Mueller and the accountability of presidents when he was clearly auditioning to be the nation’s chief law enforcement official. You can’t believe both. I choose to believe that the candid Barr was the one who wrote that memo and that means the Justice Department will be turned over soon to a man who doesn’t need to be convinced by a corrupt White House that presidents have sweeping power. Barr says he’ll allow Mueller to finish his work. That doesn’t mean he won’t try to limit or undermine Mueller even if the two are longtime friends whose wives were said to attend Bible study together. This is Trump’s Washington, and Trump’s Republican Party. William Barr is clearly on Trump’s team.

[RainCaster]

1. This clown cannot be trusted or believed anymore than DFT

I have heard him spin his opinions so many different ways over the last week. Quite simply, he's a liar. Cut from the same cloth as the Cheeto Tweeter.

[donkeypoofed]

2. Isn't he good friends with Mueller?

Mueller wouldn't be good friends with a swine, would he? I didn't like Barr either, but if hes good enough for Mueller to be good friends with, then some of my reservations have been negated.

[babylonsister]

3. Maybe their friendship has

formed because their wives attend bible study together. Anyone who blatantly campaigned for this job who knows he'd be working for this joker has got to have a screw loose.

[GeorgeGist]

4. More like slimy ...

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. he's gunning for the investigation

When he was asked about a president telling him to stop an investigation for personal reasons, he said he would not obey. It's that "personal" part that gives him the out. He thinks the investigation is flawed -- his "memo" on obstruction -- and therefore he wouldn't be shutting it down for the president's personal reasons; he'd do it for his own (flawed) legal view.

He parses things very finely, as all slimey Repugs try to do.

[allgood33]

6. It really wasn't all that "slick" either. It was a lot of high level word salad but he fools

no one on either side of the aisle. It was like back in the day with candidates in the south whose stump speeches were measured by how many ways they could say the "N" word.

[JI7]

7. i haven't read much about this guy and didn't read this article yet. but Why would he want to shut

down the investigation ?

could he have been paid off ? but if he was paid off i assume he would have been offered the job without him trying to get the job by putting out that shit.

[babylonsister]

8. He campaigned for the job. From the article:

Barr didn’t write the memo as some sort of academic exercise or to satisfy his own vanity. He didn’t write it at the request of a newspaper, or magazine, or law review. He says he wrote it because he felt he had something important to say, to DOJ and White House officials, about how the Mueller investigation was unfolding. He wrote it as a partisan brief, a partisan affair, to curry favor with the White House, and we know that because we now know that Barr made sure the president and his men were made aware of what he had written. Barr knew that his expansive view of presidential power would delight the most authoritarian president ever. It was a job application, no matter how many times he denied it on Tuesday. Maybe for White House counsel. Maybe for attorney general. Maybe for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sounds like he has higher ambitions and he's enjoying the attention. Maybe he's as unethical as the rest of them?

His daughter works for dt, and he plays the bagpipes. Reason enough to not elect him!

Barr has been married to Christine since 1973. As of 2018, the Barrs' daughter, Mary Daly, works at the U.S. Department of Justice; she serves as the Trump Administration's point person on the opioid crisis.[48] Barr is an avid bagpiper; he began playing the bagpipes at age 8, and has played competitively in Scotland with a major American pipe band. At one time, Barr was a member of the City of Washington Pipe Band.[49]

[mnmoderatedem]

9. from his testimony yesterday

it seems the White House strategy is to let the Mueller investigation run to completion, then try to suppress it s much as possible.