No attorney general since John Mitchell has gotten away with assaulting the rule of law more than Bill Barr. But unlike Mitchell, who served 19 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Barr has yet to be held accountable for his ever-expanding laundry list of outrageous misdeeds and derelictions.
To be sure, there have been several efforts to bring Barr to heel. Last July, for example, the House voted to hold both Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for refusing to turn over documents related to the Trump administration’s attempt to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census. But in an act of defiance that surprised absolutely no one, the DOJ, which Barr heads, refused to pursue charges against either cabinet member, leaving the House with no means of enforcement.
More recently, more than 2,000 former Justice Department lawyers signed open letters demanding Barr’s resignation after he intervened in the cases of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn to overturn the sentencing recommendations of career prosecutors. And in a scathing rebuke published May 9, the editorial board of the New York Times accused Barr of using the DOJ as a “political weapon” to advance and protect the personal interests of the president. And yet despite the denunciations, Barr remains, in effect, the country’s top cop. Continue reading.