Talking Points Memo displays an array of front pages from this morning’s newspapers, via Newseum, which has hundreds of examples (but requires a search and registration). As a quick look demonstrates, Bill Barr’s shilling for Donald Trump hasn’t found much success outside the conservative media bubble – but, in my view, Trump’s A.G. is savvy enough to have expected this. He achieved his purpose.
Tag Archives: William Barr
U.S. Attorney General amplifies Right wing conspiracy theories and Trump talking Points
Senator Jeanne Shaheen: So, you’re not, you’re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred?
[Exchange begins at 30:38, C-SPAN3]
Attorney General William Barr: I don’t – uh, well, I – I guess you could – I think there was spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur.
Is there a difference between a counter-intelligence investigation authorized by federal court and spying on a political campaign?
Senator Jack Reed: Do you believe that the investigation that Director Mueller undertook was a witch hunt or illegal, as has been asserted by the President?
[Exchange begins at 55:5]
Barr: Uh, as I said during my confirmation, it really depends on where you’re sitting. If you are somebody who is being falsely accused of something you would tend to view the investigation—
Reed: Well, you’re sitting as the Attorney General of the United States with a Constitutional responsibility. So, if you could answer in that regard.
Barr: Well, I’m not going to characterize. It is what it is. You know, Mueller and his team conducted an investigation and are issuing a report.
Barr’s testimony today suggests that he is acting as a political operative on behalf of Donald Trump and not as the United States Attorney General in service of the rule of law. It is dispiriting to observe the depths of degradation of the contemporary Republican Party (once a bastion of law and order).
April 11, 2019 update: Jeffrey Toobin makes the point in a pithier way:
“This is a classic demonstration of the Fox News-ification of the Republican Party. That even an establishment figure like Bill Barr, someone who comes out of the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, talks like Sean Hannity.”
Adam Schiff: “You might say that’s all OK, but I don’t think it’s oK.”
The Barr coverup continues – and Republicans pretend that the Barr letter is the Mueller report, while Barr declines to release the Mueller report. Adam Schiff cites a litany of bad behavior – all of which is on the public record – by Trump campaign officials and advisors:
- the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic nominee
- the President’s son did not call the FBI; he said he would love the help the Russians offered
- the President’s son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman Paul Manfort took the meeting and concealed it from the public
- a year later, they lied about it and the President is helped dictate the lie
- the campaign chair offered information on the campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt relief, and offered polling date to someone linked to Russian intelligence
- the President called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails and the Russians attempted later that day to hack into her campaign
- the President’s son-in-law sought to establish back-channel communications with the Russians
- an associate of the President contacted the Russian military intelligence agency through Lucifer 2 and wikileaks
- a senior campaign official was instructed to find out what dirt that hostile agency had on Trump’s opponent, and
- the National Security Advisor-designate secretly spoke with the Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions and lied about it to the FBI
“You might say that’s all OK. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s OK.
I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic. And, yes, I think it’s corrupt and evidence of collusion.”
Representative Schiff observes that he has always distinguished between this bad behavior and proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy. And he expresses complete confidence in Robert Mueller and the Mueller report.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are pretending that the Barr letter is the Mueller report and that collusion is off the table. Yesterday they issued a letter demanding that Adam Schiff step down as chairman.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, also pretending that the Barr letter is the Mueller report, declared victory at a campaign rally and thundered: “After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over.”
As noted in my previous post, the Barr letter appears to have been designed to give cover to Republicans’ falsehoods regarding the Mueller report. So far things have worked out as designed. And the coverup continues.
William Barr’s Letter is a master stroke in media misdirection and political mischief
The Attorney General’s 3 ½ page letter is a master stroke that has – by design – incited a media circus, transformed the state of political discourse, strengthening Trump and Republicans while turning the tables on Democrats, and set the stage for the Trump reelection campaign.
It has thrown Democrats back on their heels and given life to wild Republican demands for payback: with cable television black lists of Trump critics, calls for deposing Democratic committee chairs, and demands for new investigations of the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign (even the Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch visit on the tarmac), and the counterintelligence investigation of candidate Trump.
We will look back on this letter much as we look back on James Comey’s July 5, 2016 public scolding of Hillary Clinton (which overshadowed his announcement that the justice department would file no charges against her) and his announcement, two weeks before the November election, that with the discovery of new emails, the FBI was reopening the case.
Those events in 2016 were catnip for the media – including the prestige and partisan press, the tabloids, cable news, internet sites, talk radio, and social media – resulting in significant impacts on the shape of public discourse and campaign narratives. Polling shows that they swayed public opinion and, arguably, the results of the 2016 election.
In the same way, the Barr letter has fundamentally changed media preoccupations, priorities, and daily news coverage. Consider Monday morning’s headlines: ‘Republicans and Democrats angle to take offensive after Mueller report,’ Los Angeles Times and ‘Trump and Republicans Seek to Turn Tables After Report,’ New York Times. We are not yet at ‘after Mueller report!’ Barr is still hiding it from view. The Washington Post’s headline is a bit more careful, ‘With Mueller probe over, Trump allies switch from defense to bruising offense,’ but the gist is the same. We’ve raced past the actual Mueller report (in virtually complete ignorance of it) and are onto how the report boosts the Republicans and harms the Democrats. (Note these are the headlines that appeared on the first online pages of these newspapers Monday morning; they may not match the headline that appears after the click.)
The Barr letter – at barely more than 3 pages of text – is a big, shiny object that the media, political actors, and the public can’t help but fixate on. Because – apart from the Barr’s purported summary of “the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation” – there is nothing else to examine. The report is still shrouded from view.
Not a single complete sentence, as written by Robert Mueller, appears in the Barr letter. We have only words, phrases, and sentence fragments pieced together by Trump’s AG to go on.
Never mind the parsing of Barr’s letter, which reveals even at this stage that the Attorney General is spinning like mad. To understand this cynical act of media misdirection and political mischief, consider a single, simple question: How long is the Mueller report? Mueller’s talking indictments stretched to hundreds of pages. Their strength lay in details and context. Moreover, because of their considerable heft and scope, they had a greater impact than they would have otherwise. We could assess their significance and their credibility even with scads of redactions.
The Barr letter doesn’t so much as reveal the length of the report. Two hundred pages? Five hundred? More than 1,000? The lengthier the report, the fishier Barr’s letter looks. Whatever the length, though, there would be vastly more grist for the mill – and tremendously more substance for the media to dig into and the public to focus on – if we could see the actual report. We know this because we know Robert Mueller’s work.
Barr’s release of this meager summary – which we have every reason to believe has a heavy partisan slant – has precluded meaningful discussion. The letter, without the report, hides Mueller’s decision-making regarding prosecutions and declinations from view. We get, instead, a spin-doctor’s characterizations. More significantly, Barr’s letter has preemptively killed a robust series of narratives – including alarming facts and context of Russian interference, an account of the President’s off the rails actions, a record of unseemly and despicable behavior by those surrounding the Trump campaign, and who knows what else?
Well, Barr knows. And he’s not saying.
By the time we see the Mueller report (if we ever do), the Trump White House, Fox News Channel, Congressional Republicans, talk radio, Brietbart, Daily Caller, et al. will have baked-in the narrative that the Mueller investigation has exonerated the President and exposed the concerns with Russian sabotage and the Trump campaign as invidious slanders by Democrats. The mainstream media (from the New York Times to NPR to CNN and all the way down) will report all this in typical He Said, She Said fashion (which even the prestige press favors when covering partisan issues), so this cake will be fully baked.
Whatever the Mueller report contains, the significance will have been brushed aside for most Americans who have not yet chosen sides. Those are the folks who can turn elections.
Mission accomplished, Mr. Barr.
Note: my suggestion in the first sentence of this post, that Barr’s letter was crafted (“by design”) to achieve political ends, this is based on Barr’s longstanding partisanship. As Josh Marshall has reported, William Barr in his first gig as Attorney General, was among the political appointees in the Bush 1 administration who “took a case that Bush-appointees in Little Rock didn’t believe had merit and worked hard to make it an active case. This was in the hopes that a late breaking scandal would help then-President Bush stage a dramatic comeback to win reelection.”
I regard this history at least as relevant to Barr’s Trumpian partisanship as his 19-page audition memo for his second run as AG, which preemptively cast doubt on the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation of presidential obstruction.
April 4, 2019 update: The New York Times reports in this morning’s paper, “Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public,” as I suggested in this post.
(Image: William Barr via wikipedia.)
“We are going to get to the bottom of this.” – Congressman Adam Schiff
George Stephanopoulos: You say the Justice Department will have to live by that precedent, but what if they don’t? What if they simply say, “No, we’re not going to release the underlying evidence.” What options do you have?
Adam Schiff: Well, we will obviously subpoena the report. We will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress. We will take it to court if necessary. And in the end, I think, the Department understands, they’re going to have to make this public. I think Barr will ultimately understand that as well. . . .
George Stephanopoulos: When you’re talking about public pressure, are you prepared to take the Administration to court?
Adam Schiff: Absolutely. We are going to get to the bottom of this.
[Editor’s note: quoted exchange begins at 4:11.]
William Barr, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, embraces a maximal theory of presidential power
Rejecting mainstream constitutional views, William P. Barr, the deputy attorney general, told Mr. Bush that he wielded unfettered power to start a major land war on his own — not only without congressional permission, but even if Congress voted against it.
“Trump Says He Alone Can Do It. His Attorney General Nominee Usually Agrees.” by Charlie Savage, New York Times
“Mr. President, there’s no doubt that you have the authority to launch an attack,” Mr. Barr said, as he later recalled.
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” – Article 2, Section 1, United States Constitution
Is this power – clearly granted – absolute, without any exception? Or (like the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, but not the right to shout, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater) is it of more limited scope? To put the question another way: Is the president’s executive power unchecked by other provisions of the Constitution, other branches of government, and the rule of law?
William Barr espouses – take your pick – a “maximalist theory of presidential power” or a “maximalist theory of executive power.” (I regard the two expressions as interchangeable for the purposes of this post.) I had never encountered the phrase (in either version) before Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. An article in Slate (last July), “Kavanaugh Must Explain His Views on Presidential Immunity,” expressing concern that the nominee appeared to believe that the Constitution shielded a president from criminal investigation and indictment by the Department of Justice (with ominous implications for the Mueller investigation), introduced the expression:
‘Judge Kavanaugh helped pioneer a maximalist theory of presidential power associated with the notion of a “unitary executive.”’
As suggested in this quote, the debate about presidential power (if not the recent phrasing), is hardly new.
The concept of the president as a unitary executive was at the time the Constitution was drafted and ratified (1787-1788). While there is little disagreement that the president possesses executive authority, the past half century has seen considerable debate about the limits of this authority. During the Nixon administration the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and Arthur Schlesigner’s book (published the same year), The Imperial Presidency, touched directly on the issue.
More recently, John Yoo’s memos sanctioning presidential-approved torture of terrorist suspects brought the issue to the fore:
In March 2009, about a month after President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left office, Scott Horton declared that “[w]e may not have realized it, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution.” Some of the most infamous of these memos were drafted by John Yoo, an Office of Legal Counsel attorney from 2001-2003. Yoo and others – most notably, Cheney’s counsel, David Addington – advanced the unitary executive theory, a theory of presidential power Cheney had personally favored for decades.
The unitary executive theory, as implemented by the Bush administration, was claimed to justify effectively unchecked presidential power over the use of military force, the detention and interrogation of prisoners, extraordinary rendition and intelligence gathering.
“Exploring the Limits of Presidential Power,” by Chris Edelson, American Constitution Society
Even at the conservative Cato Institute, the expansive view of the unitary executive has been criticized as problematic:
‘… Kavanaugh does not consider the possibility that concentrating even greater power in the hands of a single person — the president — also poses grave risks. The “unitary executive” theory underlying his opinion made sense in a world where the executive branch was confined to the comparatively narrow range of powers granted by the original meaning of the Constitution. It is far more problematic today, including on originalist grounds.’
William Barr’s role, as described at the beginning of this post, concerned the George H.W. Bush administration. Barr relates the story with gee-whiz enthusiasm at offering legal counsel to the Commander in Chief, who addressed him as ‘Bill,’ to oral history scholars at UVA’s Miller Center. [Note: the last line of the excerpt has been redacted.]
So I went over to the meeting. It was one of these out-of-body experiences, because any constitutional lawyer would love to be asked this question under these circumstances. The President said, Bill—and I’m sure part of this was display. I realized that, and therefore answered accordingly. There was no doubt in my mind that he could do it.
He said, Bill, I’ve been reading these articles. This op-ed piece the other day said I don’t have the authority to launch an attack on the Iraqis. What’s your view, what’s the Justice Department’s view on whether I have the authority? I’m sort of flattered that he asked me a cold question without having discussed it with me first, because it meant he knew what answer I was going to give him.
I said, Mr. President, there’s no doubt that you have the authority to launch an attack. I explained why I thought he did under the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and I gave him some different theories. After saying he could do it, I gave him a secondary theory—which I was sort of proud of at the time, it was a bootstrap argument. I said, Now another reason here, Mr. President, is—even for the critics who would say that that wasn’t true—there’s no doubt that you have the authority to put 500,000 troops in the field. Congress authorized—through the approval of the UN whatever they are, resolutions, and through their authorization and all that stuff, Congress has definitely approved you putting 500,000 troops over there face-to-face with the Iraqi Army.
We have intelligence that they have weapons of mass destruction—chemical weapons, biological weapons—and your job as Commander-in-Chief is to make sure those troops are not preemptively attacked. If you feel as Commander-in-Chief that in order to protect your Army in the field you have to launch first, you absolutely can do that. Which I thought was an ingenious argument, ████████████████████████████████████████
William P. Barr Oral History, Assistant Attorney General; Deputy Attorney General; Attorney General – Transcript
In December, after Trump had nominated him to be Attorney General, the Wall St. Journal broke a story revealing that Barr had sent a private, unsolicited memo (because he was “deeply concerned with the institutions of the Presidency and the Department of Justice”) advising DOJ that Mueller’s investigation needed to be reined in as it related to obstruction of justice.
Mueller is proposing an unprecedented expansion of obstruction laws so as to reach facially-lawful actions taken by the President in exercising the discretion vested in him by the Constitution.
…
Second, in a further unprecedented step, Mueller would apply this sweeping prohibition to facially-lawful acts taken by public officials exercising of their discretionary powers if those acts influence a proceeding. Thus, under this theory, simply by exercising his Constitutional discretion in a facially-lawful way — for example, by removing or appointing an official; using his prosecutorial discretion to give direction on a case; or using his pardoning power — a President can be accused of committing a crime based solely on his subjective state of mind. As a result, any discretionary act by a President that influences a proceeding can become the subject of a criminal grand jury investigation, probing whether the President acted with an improper motive.
Casting doubt on the legitimacy of the special counsel’s probe of obstruction, Barr’s memo appealed to his view that the Constitution provided elections every four years, and impeachment by Congress, as the remedy for an errant executive:
In framing a Constitution that entrusts broad discretion to the President, the Framers chose the means they thought best to police the exercise of that discretion. The Framers’ idea was that, by placing all discretionary law enforcement authority in the hands of a single “Chief Magistrate” elected by all the People, and by making him politically accountable for all exercises of that discretion by himself or his agents, they were providing the best way of ensuring the “faithful exercise” of these powers. Every four years the people as a whole make a solemn national decision as to the person whom they trust to make these prudential judgments. In the interim, the people’s representatives stand watch and have the tools to oversee, discipline, and, if they deem appropriate, remove the President from office. Thus, under the Framers’ plan, the determination whether the President is making decisions based on “improper” motives or whether he is “faithfully” discharging his responsibilities is left to the People, through the election process, and the Congress, through the Impeachment process.
‘Re: Mueller’s “Obstruction” Theory’ by Bill Barr
Today we learned that Barr sent the memo to more than a dozen people, including virtually every attorney close to Trump: ‘Barr, who reportedly interviewed to be Trump’s defense lawyer last year, shared the memo with members of Trump’s legal team around the time he submitted it to Rosenstein and Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel, according to a letter Barr wrote to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham late Monday night. White House Special Counsel Emmet Flood and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone both received a copy of the memo, Barr told Graham, and he discussed its contents with Trump’s lawyers Marty and Jane Raskin and Jay Sekulow, as well as with Jared Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell. “My purpose was not to influence public opinion on the issue, but rather to make sure that all of the lawyers involved carefully considered the potential implications of the [obstruction] theory,” Barr wrote.’
Confirmation hearings for Barr begin today. The views of the next Attorney General (who, in the absence of a bombshell revelation, will almost certainly be William Barr) regarding presidential power will be extraordinarily consequential. Donald Trump has felt less constrained by democratic norms and more hostile to institutions of government (including the FBI, other intelligence agencies, DOJ, the courts, and Congress) than previous presidents. Putin’s fingerprints are all over the 2016 election. The future direction of, and public access to, the Mueller investigation will be in the balance as Barr serves as Attorney General for the second time.