When Donald Trump has a problem, his primal instinct is to bluster and bullshit and fire off lawsuits like squid ink until he can sneak out the back door into some new alternate reality he has constructed for himself. He bends the contours of the world until the bonds tying him to what he's done begin to wither and split, and he can shake himself free and start hatching a new scam. If all else fails, however, he gets himself a fixer to make the problem go away—even if it means they take the bullet. Just ask Michael Cohen, or, it increasingly seems, William Barr.
The putative Attorney General of the United States was very obviously hired to serve as Trump's fixer in the various investigations probing his conduct in private business and public office. While it was maybe understandable to give Barr the benefit of the doubt based on his testimony during Senate hearings and his prior career in public service, it was folly. Donald Trump's only criteria for hiring an attorney general was that they'd protect him in the way Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III had failed to in recusing himself from the Russia probe. That was why Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, a lifetime grifter who caught Trump's eye attacking the Mueller probe on television, got the job. Trump openly admitted Whitaker got the gig over the Russia investigation.
And that's why Barr got the job after authoring a 19-page memo assailing the investigation, specifically on the question of obstruction of justice, and playing a not-insignificant role in defusing the Iran-Contra scandal the last time he was attorney general under a Republican president. When Mueller finally submitted his report, Barr was there to wave away the huge body of evidence indicating Trump had repeatedly abused his power to meddle in the investigation and obstruct justice, writing in the now-infamous Barr Letter that he'd taken Mueller's non-decision on whether to charge the president and made his own: the president would not be charged.
This attracted the interest of Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California and candidate for president, when Barr appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Harris asked about his decision-making process on the obstruction counts, and the exchange did not disappoint. Harris is a former prosecutor, and she acted like it.
So the president's pet toad did not examine any of the underlying evidence before he decided that the president would not be charged. He based the decision on the report, which explicitly said it did not make a determination—but that it would have explicitly stated there was insufficient evidence to file charges if that were true. That is to say, Barr disregarded the language of the actual report and did not seek out further understanding of the underlying evidence before making his decision. As Harris put it, this would constitute an unacceptable procedure for any U.S. Attorney throughout the country. It's almost like Barr didn't care what the evidence was, he was going to TOTALLY EXONERATE! the president regardless.
And then there was this crap.
He's "trying to grapple with the word, 'suggest.'" While this has more than a little of that famous Bill Clinton riff, it is many times more concerning. The Attorney General of the United States should be able to say, with no hesitation, that the White House is not suggesting he open new investigations into people. The White House should not be intervening in the judicial system this way in a democratic republic. Charges should be filed based on evidence assembled by investigators, not the suggestion of political operatives. Yet Barr waffled and wavered. He said no one has "asked" him to do anything, but we know how Donald Trump talks. As Phil Leotardo put it, "Are you fuckin' kiddin' me? You don't ever admit the existence of this thing. Ever!"
Anyway, we now know that the Attorney General of the United States is not serving as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer, he's the president's fixer. But as the head of the Department of Justice, he is technically overseeing at least some of the 14 spinoff investigations from The Mueller Report. Can anyone have faith that William Barr will see that justice is done in those investigations? This is the guy who's playing footsie with Trumpian conspiracy theories about "spying," then pretending it was all an innocent question of word-use. Of course the public can't have confidence in him to uphold the rule of law. He should resign or be removed.
Jack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Unapocalypse, a show about solutions to the climate crisis.
