WASHINGTON: Attorney General Bill Barr had a solid reputation when he took over the US Justice Department in February, but his concerted efforts to downplay the Mueller report’s damning allegations against President Donald Trump have left that reputation tattered.
The veteran Washington lawyer, 68, encouraged hopes that, under his leadership, the Justice Department would shake off the taint of politicization in the first two years of Trump’s presidency.
But ten weeks later, he is being branded as more political than his predecessor, labeled a liar and facing calls for impeachment and a possible charge of contempt of Congress.
Barr has stunned many who gave him the benefit of the doubt by declaring Trump fully cleared of accusations of collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice.
But Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s full report on Russian election meddling, while not finding criminal behavior, detailed a disturbing number of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, and a deep pattern of obstruction by the president.
Ignoring that, Barr has instead appeared to take part in Trump’s attacks on the Mueller investigation and his own Justice Department.
He belittled a letter from Mueller complaining that he distorted the report as “snitty.” And echoing Trump’s own complaints, he suggested that the investigation may have illegally “spied” on the president’s campaign.
After a stormy hearing in Congress on Wednesday, Barr took flack from multiple directions for his alleged determination to protect Trump at any cost.
“Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject,” Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in the Atlantic magazine.
Former FBI director James Comey, whose May 2017 firing by Trump precipitated Mueller’s obstruction investigation, suggested Barr sold his soul to work for the administration.
“How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like ‘no collusion’ and FBI ‘spying’?” Comey wrote in The New York Times.
Critics maybe should not have been surprised.
Barr has since the 1980s been a fixture of Washington’s Republican establishment.
When he sat in the attorney general’s chair for a year in 1991-92, he protected president George H. W. Bush’s powers, outraging Democrats when he engineered Bush’s pardon of a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal involving illegal arms sales to Iran.
He then spent nearly two decades representing the interests of Verizon, fighting any effort to expand regulation of or diminish the power of one of the largest US telecommunications operators.
He was also a rising figure in the Federalist Society and politically active Catholic groups in the US capital, from where the most recent conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been chosen.
Trump chose Barr to replace attorney general Jeff Sessions knowing Barr was a strong critic of Mueller’s probe.
In June 2018, with Sessions’s job already known to be imperiled, Barr sent an unsolicited legal memo to the Justice Department and White House arguing that the investigation impinged on presidential prerogatives and was based on a “fatally misconceived” view of obstruction law.
Those views appear to have guided his decision to unilaterally declare Trump cleared of wrongdoing, once Mueller’s report was completed.
Once Mueller’s report was finished, “it was my baby,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
But his determination to help the White House move beyond the probe has created a new problem.
Earlier in April, Barr told Congress twice that he was unaware of any disagreement Mueller might have had with him on his initial March 24 summary of the report.
In fact, a letter made public Tuesday showed Mueller complaining that Barr had distorted the report’s conclusions.
Outraged, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Barr of lying to Congress, a criminal offense. Others demanded Barr’s head.
“It’s time to begin impeachment proceedings against AG Barr,” said Democratic Representative Eric Swallwell.
“At every step he has acted as Trump’s lawyer, when he’s sworn to be America’s. He must go.”
Veteran of numerous tough legal battles, Barr remained unperturbed. His boss the president was pleased.
Barr “was really, really solid and did a great job,” Trump said after Wednesday’s hearing.
US Attorney General Bill Barr under fire for protecting Trump
US Attorney General Bill Barr under fire for protecting Trump
- Barr has since the 1980s been a fixture of Washington’s Republican establishment
- Trump chose Barr to replace attorney general Jeff Sessions knowing Barr was a strong critic of Mueller’s probe
Counter protesters chase off conservative influencer during Minneapolis immigration crackdown
MINNEAPOLIS: Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally in support of the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown in Minneapolis on Saturday, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement though not yet deployed to city streets.
There have been protests every day since the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.
Conservative influencer Jake Lang organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-ICE demonstration, saying on social media beforehand that he intended to “burn a Qur’an” on the steps of City Hall. But it was not clear if he carried out that plan.
Only a small number of people showed up for Lang’s demonstration, while hundreds of counterprotesters converged at the site, yelling over his attempts to speak and chasing the pro-ICE group away. They forced at least one person to take off a shirt they deemed objectionable.
Lang appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scrapes on his head.
Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes before receiving clemency as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for Jan. 6 defendants last year. Lang recently announced that he is running for US Senate in Florida.
In Minneapolis, snowballs and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van and heavily equipped city police arrived.
“We’re out here to show Nazis and ICE and DHS and MAGA you are not welcome in Minneapolis,” protester Luke Rimington said. “Stay out of our city, stay out of our state. Go home.”
National Guard ‘staged and ready’
The state guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to support the Minnesota State Patrol “to assist in providing traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”
Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.
The announcement came more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the guard to be ready to support law enforcement in the state.
During the daily protests, demonstrators have railed against masked immigration officers pulling people from homes and cars and other aggressive tactics. The operation in the deeply liberal Twin Cities has claimed at least one life: Renee Good, a US citizen and mother of three, was shot by an ICE officer during a Jan. 7 confrontation.
On Friday a federal judge ruled that immigration officers cannot detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities, including while observing officers during the Minnesota crackdown.
Living in fear
During a news conference Saturday, a man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest last weekend.
Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson’s front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the crackdown.
Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his recent arrest, a judge ruled that federal officials did not give him enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered the second arrest.
The White House denied the account of the re-arrest and that Miller had anything to do with it.
Gibson was flown to a Texas immigration detention facility but returned home following the judge’s ruling. His family used a dumbbell to keep their damaged front door closed amid subfreezing temperatures before spending $700 to fix it.
“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.
DHS said an “activist judge” was again trying to stop the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in.”
