Barr, The Door

"Trump is the most purely evil human being I've ever met..." — Tony Schwartz, actual author of “Art of the Deal.”

Maybe he never met Bill Barr.

If Trump is the lesser evil, it’s because he’s so damaged that he can’t help being amoral, any more than the proverbial scorpion could help killing the frog. Barr, on the other hand, made a conscious choice to be Trump’s handmaiden, purposefully subverting the Department of Justice. Not just evil: he could be the most dangerous man in D.C., though between Trump, Barr, and Mitch McConnell, it’s a tough choice. That treacherous triumvirate has so damaged democracy it’ll be tough for Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress to make it right. If, by now, it’s even possible.

Attorney General William Barr wasted no time in weaponizing our DOJ as projector and protector of presidential power, rather than a guardian of justice for all citizens. His opening act, mischaracterizing the Mueller report, was as cynical as it gets. He knew truth would out, but figured if his lies got there first, he could count on Fox “news” and other rightwing media to bury Mueller’s real findings. Calling the investigation “… a grave injustice… unprecedented in American history” (maybe he never met Hillary Clinton), he expected Trump’s supporters to accept his version, facts be damned. They did, and still do. The truth is, Robert Mueller was too soft.

It’s gotten worse. Here, in cronylogical order, are some of Barr’s lesser-known offenses, presaging his recent explosion of two-handed digital salutes to democracy: he undertook a spurious anti-trust action against a few small cannabis producers; he went after automakers for rejecting Trump’s deregulation by agreeing to California’s clean-air rules (like the Constitution, federalism is important to Republicans only when it suits them); asked how history would judge his actions, he said, “History is written by the winners.”

But it’s the recent, blatant attacks on separation of powers, on elections, and on peaceful protests that confirm his true nature and purely Trumpophilic agenda. If “evil” is too inflammatory, what else shall we call turning the DOJ into an attack-dog for an all-powerful “president,” accountable to no one, not even the electorate? This is America, after all; not Trump’s idolized Russia.

Barr’s effort to end the case against Michael Flynn, who’d pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury, is the least of it. Where shall we place his approval, around which he danced like Sean Spicer on DWTS, of the brutal removal of peaceful protestors so Trump could perform his Bible-walk desecration? As threatening as it was to the First Amendment, it’s still not his worst. The soviet-style purging the Southern District of New York of its US Attorney, mid-investigation of Trump’s shady businesses and henchmen, ranks higher, even as he fumbled so clumsily in his desperation to get it done.

The man he fired, Republican Geoffrey Berman, garners bipartisan respect as a man of integrity. For a replacement, Barr chose a golf-buddy of Trump who’s never prosecuted a case of any sort. He has, however, lawyered for Deutsche Bank, fined for laundering billions in Russian mob money, provider of millions in loans to Trump. Suspicious? Not to Senate Rs and incorrigible Trumpists. If it were Eric Holder similarly protecting President Barack Obama, would we hear such high-decibel silence?

As egregious as that full-frontal attack on constitutional democracy is, there’s something still worse: namely, his transparently craven lie about voting by mail. Ignoring his role as defender of free and fair elections, he simply made up warnings about the most powerful way to circumvent Republicans’ undemocratic vote-suppression tactics. It “opens the floodgates for widespread fraud,” he conjured. Foreign governments could create a deluge of fake ballots, he prophesied. Right. Tailored to each of thousands of precincts and parishes? Then what? Bring bulging bags to post offices around the country? “Pleez to be taking for mail. Eez okay no problem.”

We expect perpetual prevarication from our perfidious “president,” but Barr is the putative chief law-enforcer of our country, lying between his jowls, not caring how preposterous; protecting his boss, scorning the American people.

A word about Trump’s inaction over Russia paying Taliban fighters $100,000 per killed US and coalition soldier. While Congress is briefed on the mounting evidence and other countries share theirs, only three entities deny it: Russia, the Taliban, and Trump, the boy who cried hoax. Res, as they say on the streets, ipsa loquitur.  

Finally, on this Independence Day, consider the obvious consequences of having a “president” who ignores intelligence, whether it’s about a pandemic or the actions of his “friend” and our enemy, Putin, and so much more; who, while our country is torn asunder by fear and hate of fellow citizens, chooses to make it worse. As campaign strategy. 

Barr The Door

My next column in The Everett Herald:

When President Barack Obama addressed his US Attorneys, he told them, “I appointed you but you don’t serve me. You serve the American people. And I expect you to act with independence and integrity.” When Trump took office, he fired them all. “Independence and integrity” are anathema to the presidency he envisioned and which he’s so easily spawned. 

He misjudged his first Attorney General. There was reason to believe Jeff Sessions would kow to his tow; and, mostly, he did. But he retained enough of something approximating integrity to recuse himself from overseeing Robert Mueller’s investigation. Naturally, this angered Trump. 

Enter William Barr, who hung what had passed for integrity on the White House pegboard as he entered, where it dangles still, alongside many others’. A career-long advocate for the unbound “unitary executive,” he’s been an eager doer of Trump’s bidding ever since.  

History won’t forget Barr’s opening gambit: distortion and outright lying about the Mueller Report, pleasing the “president” and his media, rightly figuring his dissembling would Velcro to Trumpists’ prickly minds. It has. Subsequently, Mr. Barr has made clear his full-time, exclusive commitment to carrying water for Trump. 

Under Trump and Barr, independence of our Department of Justice, indispensable to a functioning democratic republic, suffered a painful but quick death. Barr’s interventions in cases about which Trump has expressed displeasure is exactly what Attorneys General should not be doing, for reasons so obvious they require no mention. 

Seeing nothing wrong with a “president” interfering, even when prosecutors followed DOJ sentencing guidelines, Trump’s defenders were quick to approve. Claiming it’s his right to do whatever he wants, they ardently defend using the DOJ as his personal vendetta and self-serving machinery, expecting “his” A.G. to follow orders in all matters. Nothing wrong with that, they argued, to Fox viewers. Take directions from Trump to investigate the investigators. Let the “president” decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t. 

Attacking judges and jurors is his prerogative, too; totally harmless to our system of justice.  

In fact, this is unrestrained autarchy, which shouldn’t be hard, even for Trumpists, to understand. Why don’t they care, and why have they renounced American jurisprudence?  

In response to Trump’s despotism by tweet, Barr spoke out: “It’s time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” he said. Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job ...” Oh, look, enthused the media: Barr is calling out Trump in public! It’s a new beginning!! 

Bullwaste. The “job” to which he referred is defending Trump no matter the cost to our nation. What he meant was, “Cool it, Donald. You’re making it hard to hide the cahooting.” Playing along, rightwing media feigned outrage at Barr’s pushback, helpfully pretending there was space between the two. Lou Dobbs, who cheerleads when Trump claims a constitutional right to absolute power, called it “A damn shame." Unfazed and uncaring, Trump escalated his “impossible” tweets. If Barr meant what he said, he’d have resigned.  

It’s not only Trump’s vendettas against “enemies” and helping friends that Barr is facilitating. At Trump’s behest, he tried to help Recep Erdogan stop American prosecution of a Turkish bank. Yet another abuse to benefit Trump, whose business failures have left him in hock to foreign banks. 

We’ve come to expect unqualified defense, by today’s Republicans, of whatever dictatorial move Trump makes. But to defend presidential manipulations of the Department of Justice is monumental hypocrisy. Those defenders would be shattering eardrums with their screams for impeachment if a Democrat did what Trump is demanding and what Barr is doing. 

If defending and obeying our laws and prosecuting those who break them is subject to presidential whim, especially this vindictive, prevaricating, uninformed, strongman-emulating one, laws are meaningless. Yet Congressional Republicans applaud it. Which illustrates the obvious: if it benefits the right people, corruption is fine with them. 

King Donald’s pardons of corrupt Mar-al-Lago pals, and current and future big-dollar donors should outrage everyone. That it doesn’t confirms Trump’s normalization of lawlessness and fraud, and the moral collapse of today’s Republican leaders. 

Speaking of which, the steel contract for Trump’s saw-soft, easily-climbable, wind-blown-over wall went to a group whose ownership gave $1.75 million to a Trump super-PAC. And Trump just waived federal contracting rules, so there’ll be more. It’s the story of Trump: the con and the conned.  

Trump hasn’t yet killed President Obama’s economic recovery. For Republicans, evidently, that’s all it takes to justify abandoning integrity. 

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