Following the Electoral College
vote which as expected confirmed Joe Biden as president-elect, Attorney General
William Barr announced that he was resigning his office forthwith, probably because
there was no further reason for him to hang around, and Donald Trump probably
told Barr that since he had “failed” to get him reelected, it was best for him to get out of town. It remains
to be seen if his replacement for the next five weeks, Jeffrey Rosen, will be his
own man, or Trump’s.
One thing for
certain is that Barr left with his rotten reputation intact. His resignation
letter was full of lies and malinformation.
He was “proud” to serve in the cause of the “many successes” and “unprecedented
achievements” Trump allegedly “delivered.” Barr, obviously mindful that his “legacy”
will be attacked by historians, persisted in the self-serving whine that Trump
accomplished all despite being “immediately met by a partisan onslaught” that
was “abusive and deceitful”—conveniently forgetting that Trump’s first actions
in office set the tone for his administration’s abuses and deceit, and that it
was Trump who was the one who raised partisanship to almost the point of civil
war.
Barr again
attacked the Mueller investigation, again hypocritically ignoring the fact that
it was Trump’s own Justice Department that initiated the investigation, and
which did result in convictions of Trump campaign associates. Barr’s letter
went on in frustrating fashion with more indefensible falsifications of Trump’s
“accomplishments,” and was clearly meant to pacify both Trump and throw shade
on Barr’s own hyper-partisanship.
Let’s recall some of the things
that Barr will be “remembered” for. Barr
started out “innocuously” enough with his antipathy toward the legalization of
marijuana in several states. Barr
ignored arguments by career staff that mergers between sellers of marijuana did
not warrant antitrust investigations, and Barr demanded that these
investigations continue without due process to determine if there was actually
any “harm” being done to those involved in the business. A whistleblower
revealed that Barr’s actions had nothing to do with the law, but with his own
personal feelings about the legalization of pot.
But if there was any one thing
that Barr signed on for the job to do, that was to go on an all-out assault on
the Mueller investigation, which he had previously attacked prior to his
confirmation; one wonders why so many senators seemed unmindful of the fact
that far from bringing “gravitas” and “experience” to the position of Attorney General, Barr’s
previous stint in the position in the George H.W. Bush administration should
have given lawmakers a clue of what Barr intended to do—which was to shield the
president from any and all criminal liability.
Barr said nothing about the
Mueller investigation until it was completed, and his own personal “summary”
letter focused almost exclusively around the idea that the investigation found
no “conclusive” evidence of Russian collusion with Trump officials, twisting it
into a claim that there was “conclusive” evidence that there was no such
evidence at all. The letter ignored the convictions of Trump associates, the
indictments of Russians and Russian agencies, and chose to ignore the fact that
evidence was found that Trump officials engaged in obstruction, but made the
mistake of allowing Barr’s Justice Department decide if charges would be
brought.
Barr
also became involved in matters of foreign policy, first assisting Trump in “helping”
his “friend,” Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan, to end the investigation into the
Turkish state-owned Halkbank, which was accused of violating U.S. sanctions
against Iran in a massive money-laundering scheme. However, the case seems to
have become too “big” for Barr to simply sweep under the rug, and the case
continues as a federal judge this past October refused to dismiss it. Barr also
sought help from several foreign countries to discover what information they
supplied the Mueller investigation, apparently hoping to find “irregularities,”
which if they did exist were never made public.
Barr ignored the findings of the
DOJ’s own inspector general, who found that there was nothing illegal about
government surveillance on the Trump campaign. Barr insisted that improper “spying”
occurred, and assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate if such was the
case. Durham’s probe has been ongoing for 18 months, and unlike the Mueller
investigation it has been almost bereft of point, with one guilty plea from a
low-level FBI official who changed one word on a FISA request.
Barr has also promulgated ideas of
unfettered executive authority, and the power of the executive to do as it wishes,
with only an election to hold the guilty “accountable.” The Durham
investigation also illustrates Barr’s belief in his power to investigate and
prosecute political enemies for purely partisan motives, if a motive is even
necessary at all. Barr has repeatedly refused to come before Congress to
explain this and other actions, even under the threat of contempt.
More recently Barr had been in the
forefront of advancing baseless claims of voter fraud, even sending out
threatening memos to polling stations in battleground states. After the
election, Barr toned down the rhetoric, even “disappearing” for the most part
as he realized his time was drawing to a close, admitting that there was
nothing he could “prove” to change the election result.
One wonders what exactly Trump and
Barr have accomplished during their years together; almost nothing that will
last, since everything they have done can be easily undone by the incoming
administration, since save for the tax “reform” law that mainly benefited Trump
and his rich friends, none of it was through legislative action. When all is
said and done, four years from now there will be nothing left of Barr’s “legacy”
save the memory of the outrages he and Trump committed upon the democratic
institutions in this country.
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