William Barr is the most corrupt Attorney General since—William Barr

This past week the U.S. passed Italy for the most deaths from the Covid-19. More than 40 percent are in New York, which Donald Trump’s point man and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, claims is insufficient evidence to justify the state’s requests for emergency medical devices—he says he’s got it all worked out in that vacuum between his ears about what the state “really” needs. Trump also claimed that his daughter, Ivanka, “created”10 million jobs in this country—half of them apparently shipped overseas. Alright, so what is her jobs “plan” now that 16 million and counting are out-of-work? We know that the only “qualification” that Jared or Ivanka have to even be mentioned in polite conversation is because “daddy” put them into positions they are not competent to be in, because he assumes (rightly) that their loyalty is first and foremost to his person, not to this country. They would otherwise mean nothing to anyone with any sense.

We all should know (at least those outside the Fox News bubble) that Trump and China are at fault in equal measure for what is happening on the ground in this country. But of course there is a “plan” to save Trump from his own infamy, by claiming that it’s all part of a vast conspiracy to “destroy” his presidency and prevent his reelection. Which of course leads us to the efforts of current Attorney General William Barr to discredit the Mueller investigation, and with the help of John Durham, to actually criminalize FBI agents and Mueller’s investigators who were too “zealous” in trying to uncover evidence of Russian efforts to insure the election of Trump. 

First of all, the evidence is there that Trump stooges attempted to gain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton from foreign sources, which is a federal crime. Just because the Russian national didn’t provide the kind of “dirt” they were looking for at the infamous Trump Tower meeting doesn’t mean that those present were not doing something illegal; they were. Trump and Roger Stone were caught on tape discussing Stone’s alleged personal knowledge about an upcoming WikiLeaks dump that would likely hurt Clinton and help his campaign. Illegal? Yes. Of course, Stone lied about it from start-to-finish, just like everyone else in the Trump orbit either lied or refused to talk. The Mueller investigation also indicted several Russian organizations and numerous individuals for interfering with the 2016 election to favor Trump. We know that Trump and his surrogates attempted to coerce Ukraine’s president into helping his 2020 reelection by digging up “dirt” on Joe and Hunter Biden, so we know what Trump is capable of, and as we have seen, when he is not held to account, Trump uses it not as a “warning” not to continue to do things that are unethical or criminal, but to justify to himself that he can do whatever he wants.

Trump obviously is not getting any good legal advice from the person who is allegedly the top law enforcement officer in the country, Attorney General Barr; in fact Barr doesn’t seem to know anything about “the law,” even when he is talking like a tough guy in front of an audience of real law enforcement officers. We have to remember something—Barr never worked as either a real prosecuting or defense attorney. Save for a couple of stints as a corporate lawyer, Barr has been a right-wing political hack since almost the very beginning of his career, and he continues to be one, not just ignoring the crimes of the Trump administration, but refusing to take seriously the outside interference in this country’s democratic process, so long as it benefits the political party and president he is a slave too. The Justice Department’s dropping of charges against the indicted Russians is itself a way to wipe away the idea of both Russian interference and probable Trump campaign collusion with it. 

Despite almost no real qualifications for the post, George H.W. Bush appointed Barr first acting, and then full-time, Attorney General during his presidency. Why? Because Barr promised he would do something “special” for him: to kill the continuation of the Iran-Contra investigations and trials, and provide Bush with a “legal” justification to pardon those like former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger who still had to testify under oath about what Bush’s role was in the scandal and what he knew, which even by his own admission in his diary was “everything.” 

On the other hand, Barr was not above pursuing his racially-tinged idea of “law and order.” He composed a “study” entitled The Case for More Incarceration, which was little more than what the far-right’s idea of “social engineering” was. For those who still don’t understand how far to the right the Clinton administration and the DNC it controlled had gone, Barr’s treatise was used as the basis of The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which led to mass incarceration of mostly minorities convicted of non-violent crimes. I also regard the Violence Against Women Act a part of the shift to the right, particularly since it relied on stereotyping of minority males and ignored domestic violence committed by women (see my post on Amber Heard in February). Today, of course, Barr continues to bend the law in favor of social injustice, especially for asylum seekers for whom any semblance of justice is denied—including those who are most susceptible to Covid-19 infection, who are in federal or ICE lock-up simply for the “crime” of walking across the border, which before they were legally allowed to do if applying for asylum at a border station.

Barr no doubt hoped that the more Democratic-leaning voters were in prison, the better for the electoral chances for Republicans. Yes, Barr did indeed have partisan politics on the brain, not the objective pursuit of justice, two decades ago. Although people might not recall it now, Barr vigorously pursued what he wanted viewed as “corruption” by mostly Democrats in the House Banking Scandal, or “Rubbergate,” in which some House members were accused of deliberately overdrawing their checking accounts with the House “bank” without penalty. Although a few House members did abuse the system, these overdraws were common and typically covered by the members’ next pay checks, so it generally wasn’t viewed as a “problem” until Barr had a brain fart about how it could be used for political advantage, as long as only a few Republicans were “collateral damage.”

By the time the 1994 mid-term elections came along, 77 mostly Democratic House members were forced to resign because of negative media attention, or lost reelection. The partisan hypocrisy was such that the then House Minority Whip, Newt Gingrich, insured that Barr’s hand-picked special investigator released all the names of the House members who were singled out for “special attention,” most of them again Democrats. Why hypocritical? Gingrich was one of the worst abusers of the system, yet somehow he escaped scrutiny or penalty; like Trump, just shouting loudly could drown-out the questions posed.

There have been other corrupt Attorneys General, like John Mitchell, but Barr has set his own “Barr” of corruption so high that only he can pole vault over it. When the Iran-Contra scandal hit, Attorney General Ed Meese at least had the decency of trying to stay above the ethical line, not below it, and even Ronald Reagan was obliged to admit that he allowed his stooges to go too far in his wish to sell arms to Iran supposedly in exchange for hostages, but with the “profits” of the sales illegally used, in contravention of the Boland Amendment, to arm the Nicaraguan Contras, who were little more than a group of armed thugs in support of the previous right-wing murder regime. 

In 1992, Barr worked for the reelection of Bush I by shielding him from his culpability in the Iran-Contra scandal; that Bush lost does not mitigate the crime. In 2020 he is again acting as the political hack, ignoring continuing Russian election interference by “investigating” the investigators. Barr and Durham should not be allowed the fruits of their unethical (and perhaps even slightly criminal) act of pretending that crimes were not committed by those close to Trump, and given what we heard from him in that infamous phone call, no doubt by Trump himself. Whatever comes out of the Barr/Durham investigation (and its suspicious timing), we should to take it for the chicanery that it is.