Tag: AG Barr

Graham Says DOJ Will Probe Bidens, Warns Russia Probers ‘Going To Jail’

Sen. Lindsey Graham took to the Sunday talk shows to bask in the Senate’s nullification of Donald Trump’s impeachment for using the tools of his power to extort the Ukrainian government into providing him “dirt” on a Democratic election opponent. It is not just Trump who appears to feel unleashed; Graham, too, was eager to describe the next steps of the administration-led descent into American fascism.

A first step: Trump “private lawyer” Rudy Giuliani’s smear campaign against the Bidens is now moving into Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department. Whatever Barr’s prior pretenses may have been, Barr is now explicitly establishing the means by which Rudy’s propaganda can be filtered into official “investigations” of Trump’s targeted enemies.

Throughout the House and press investigations into the Ukraine scandal, Trump Attorney General Barr either refused comment or denied that he was involved with the Giuliani efforts, despite Trump specifically naming both Barr and Giuliani as contacts for the Ukrainian president in the “transcript” of Trump’s now-infamous phone call. Whether this was a lie or not—and it is almost certainly a direct lie by a complicit Barr—such pretenses have now vanished. Continue reading.

Historian breaks down why AG Barr’s ‘anti-democratic’ rhetoric recalls crackdowns on civil rights activists in the 1960s

AlterNet logoProponents of police accountability — from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to the NAACP to the Rev. Al Sharpton — have repeatedly stressed that they aren’t anti-law enforcement. But as Attorney General William Barr sees it, an anti-police mood is sweeping the U.S., and historian Joshua Clark Davis points out the parallels between Barr’s rhetoric and a crackdown on dissent in the 1960s.

Davis, in an article for The Nation, notes that when Barr spoke at a December 3 event honoring recipients of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Award for Distinguished Service in Policing, he asserted that Americans must show “the respect and support that law enforcement deserves.” And Barr had a threatening tone when he added, “If communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”

Barr, Davis explains, “could have just as easily uttered these sentiments in the 1960s as in 2019.” And Davis (who teaches at the University of Baltimore) draws a parallel between Barr’s remarks and what Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker had to say during a speech in 1964, when he asserted, “The law applies to everyone, and no one is permitted to violate it regardless of what their excuses are. Detractors of the police establishment seized upon the cry of ‘police brutality’ as their most effective tool.” Continue reading

Bill Barr finally revealed the real reason he’s such an aggressive Trump defender

AlterNet logoAttorney General Bill Barr has become a lightning rod of sorts in administration, standing out front and taking public hits as he does President Donald Trump’s dirty work at the Justice Department.

Far from being the institutionalist even many critics of Trump hoped Barr would be, the attorney general showed his true colors when he spun Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the conclusions of the Russia investigation. Mueller and his team so objected to that presentation that they sent Barr a letter arguing that the report had been distorted to the public. Barr later said that the letter was “snitty.” Since the end of the Mueller investigation, Barr has repeatedly and consistently proven himself to be a fierce defender of the president’s interests, regardless of the consequence of U.S. institutions.

So what, exactly, does Barr think he’s doing? Why is the attorney general acting like the personal attorney of the president? In a new interview this week, Barr finally gave a clear reason why, from his perspective, he acts the way he does.

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Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Is Also Attorney General Bill Barr’s Scandal

“It’s as if the department’s only job is to protect Trump. They should change their name to the Department of Cover-up”

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Bill Barr got slammed by former prosecutors and Constitutional lawyers for playing a pivotal role in President Trump’s favor during the dying days of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

He may have just done Trump another massive solid in the Ukraine whistleblower scandal, which now threatens to consume the White House.

Barr’s intimate involvement in the new scandal spilled out into public view on Wednesday, with vivid details that enraged Democratic members of Congress and left former prosecutors worrying openly about the Department of Justice’s increasingly battered reputation.

View the complete September 25 article by Greg Walters on the Vice website here.

Ex-federal prosecutor warns Bill Barr could ‘run interference’ on the Epstein case if Trump is potentially involved

AlterNet logoUPDATE: Since the publication of this story, it has been widely reported that Attorney General Bill Barr is recusing from the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah highlighted the troubling nature of Attorney General Bill Barr’s position leading the Justice Department in a new op-ed reflecting on the arrest of billionaire and alleged sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

While it often seems that sexual abusers and high-status men guilty of criminal wrongdoing face little actual accountability, Rocah argued, Epstein’s arrest indicates, at least in this instance, the justice might be served.

But she has serious concerns about the attorney general’s potential involvement. Barr oversees all federal prosecutions, even the charges, such as those against Epstein, brought by the famously independent Southern District of New York. While Barr may have no interest in going easy on Epstein, Rocah warned he may be tempted to get involved if the president falls within the scope of the investigation:

View the complete July 8 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Barr Threatens Not to Testify Before House, but Democrats May Subpoena Him

WASHINGTON — The powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened on Sunday to subpoena Attorney General William P. Barr if Mr. Barr refuses to testify this week, a move that could lead to a major escalation of the long-running feud between the White House and congressional Democrats over testimony and access to documents.

The threat by the chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, came on the eve of Democrats’ return to Washington after a two-week congressional recess that has been dominated by questions about the special counsel’s report. Mr. Barr is scheduled to come before Mr. Nadler’s committee on Thursday to testify about it.

But Mr. Barr and Democrats are at loggerheads over the Democrats’ proposed format for questioning him, and now the much-anticipated hearing is in doubt. The dispute spilled out into the open on Sunday when Democrats revealed that Mr. Barr was threatening to skip the session if they did not change their terms. Mr. Nadler said they have no intention of doing so.

View the complete April 28 article by Shertl Gay Stolberg on the The New Times website here.

Here are all the Russian interference efforts that didn’t make it into Barr’s letter

Secessionists, fundamentalists, the NRA, and the far-left all played their role, but they didn’t make it into Barr’s summary report.

Special counsel Robert Mueller may not have found the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but plenty of Americans — wittingly or otherwise — have helped Moscow’s election meddling efforts in recent years. Secessionists, Jill Stein and her campaign, and members of groups organized around gun rights and far-right Christian movements have spent the past few years cultivating ties with those close to the Kremlin and using their platforms to promote Russia-friendly ideas.

None of these groups were mentioned by Attorney General William Barr, who issued a letter on Sunday confirming that Russia conducted coordinated campaigns to interfere in America’s elections.

According to Barr, Mueller’s report found that Russian operatives reached out to Trump’s campaign, but that no member of the campaign actively colluded with the Russian government. However, Barr wrote that Mueller also “determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.” Both of these efforts — social media interference, and stealing and disseminating internal Democratic documents and emails — were widely known before the report’s conclusion.

View the complete March 27 article by Casey Michel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Barr: Mueller ‘did not establish’ Trump-Russia collusion, but obstruction questions remain

White House says AG’s summary of special counsel report exonerates president

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III “did not establish” that members of Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, but left it up to Attorney General William Barr to determine whether the president obstructed justice to stymie the investigation, the AG wrote in a letter to Congress on Sunday.

Barr has declined to pursue the obstruction thread, he wrote to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees in a four-page letter summarizing the key findings from Mueller’s report.

Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the day-to-day operation of the special counsel, “concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” the AG wrote in his letter.

View the complete March 24 article by Griffin Connolly and Chris Cioffi on The Roll Call website here.