Tag: Trump and Barr are weakening American democracy

Why Bill Barr may have ‘gone too far’ this time in trying to protect Trump

AlterNet logoWhen President Donald Trump was expressing his frustration over former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in 2018, he famously remarked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” — a reference to his infamous far-right attorney who was an ally of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Trump later found an attorney general who, unlike Jeff Sessions, turned out to be the loyalist he was hoping for: Bill Barr.

Journalist Joan Walsh,  in an article this week for The Nation, argues that Trump found his Roy Cohn in Barr. But she said that now Barr is becoming “sloppier” as he becomes “more brazen.”

“Barr’s decline into blatant but ineffectual lawlessness is proof that Trumpism is a degenerative disease,” she said. Continue reading.

Stone received ‘favorable treatment’ because of relationship with Trump, former prosecutor will testify

The Hill logoA former prosecutor who worked on the Roger Stone case is expected to testify Wednesday that top officials at the Justice Department (DOJ) intervened on behalf of President Trump to help his longtime friend receive a lighter sentence.

Aaron Zelinsky, who is slated to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, will allege that Stone received more favorable treatment as a result of his relationship with the president.

“What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” Zelinsky wrote in an opening statement released by the panel in advance of the hearing. Continue reading.

Bill Barr just contradicted Trump’s excuse for going into the White House bunker

AlterNet logoAttorney General Bill Barr is still trying to desperately clean up the public relations mess created when federal law enforcement violently cleared the area in front of the White House last week prior to President Donald Trump’s trip across the street. But in trying to tamp down the blowback these acts sparked, Barr — apparently inadvertently — undermined Trump’s transparently silly excuse for his recent trip to the White House bunker.

Critics have slammed the administration, and Trump and Barr in particular, for the plan that included officials assaulting, teargassing, and otherwise accosting the protesters who were participating in First Amendment freedoms in Lafayette Square. Journalists on the scene also came under that assault and reported that it came without warning or provocation.

The administration has tried to push back on this narrative, claiming the protesters were warned, that at least some were throwing objects at police, and that “tear gas” wasn’t used (even though pepper bombs — which release an irritating and tear-inducing gaseous compound — were indisputably used, and evidence indicates other forms of tear gas were employed.) But no compelling evidence supports these accounts, and the reporters who were there tell a different story. Continue reading.

Frank Figliuzzi: Trump’s ‘Obamagate’ comments and Barr’s Flynn meddling suggest troubling new pivot

Trump can’t pull off this ruse by himself, of course, but he has a partner. Barr is riding shotgun during this scorched-earth joyride against justice

In my 25 years as an FBI special agent and (now retired) head of the bureau’s counterintelligence, I learned the value of predictive analysis. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI transitioned from an investigative agency adept at investigating what happened after the fact to an intelligence agency capable of forecasting and preventing harm from happening in the future.

Forecasting is a lot easier when there are clear clues. And when it comes to assessing the trap Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump appear to be setting for us, the warning signs are plentiful. We don’t need to read tea leaves for this. We only need to review tweets.

On Saturday, Trump retweeted a fantastical fiction of a theory from The Federalist asserting that former President Barack Obama’s White House intelligence discussions about, in part, the trustworthiness of incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn and members of the Trump transition team were proof that Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden were malevolently conspiring against the Trump administration. Continue reading.