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
How decades of deforestation led to catastrophic Sumatra floods
- At least 1.4m hectares of forest in flood-affected provinces were lost to deforestation since 2016
- Indonesian officials vow to review permits, investigate companies suspected of worsening the disasters
JAKARTA: About a week after floods and landslides devastated three provinces in Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Rubama witnessed firsthand how the deluge left not only debris and rubble but also log after log of timber.
They were the first thing that she saw when she arrived in the Beutong Ateuh Banggalang district of Aceh, where at least two villages were wiped out by floodwaters.
“We saw these neatly cut logs moving down the river. Some were uprooted from the ground, but there are logs cut into specific sizes. This shows that the disaster in Aceh, in Sumatra, it’s all linked to illegal forestry practices,” Rubama, empowerment manager at Aceh-based environmental organization HAKA, told Arab News.
Monsoon rains exacerbated by a rare tropical storm caused flash floods and triggered landslides across Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra in late November, killing 969 people and injuring more than 5,000 as of Wednesday, as search efforts continue for 252 others who remain missing.
In the worst-hit areas, residents were cut off from power and communication for days, as floodwater destroyed bridges and torrents of mud from landslides blocked roads, hampering rescue efforts and aid delivery to isolated villages.
When access to the affected regions gradually improved and the scale of the disaster became clearer, clips of washed-up trunks and piles of timber crashing into residential areas circulated widely online, showing how the catastrophic nature of the storm was compounded by deforestation.
“This is real, we’re seeing the evidence today of what happens when a disaster strikes, how deforestation plays a major role in the aftermath,” Rubama said.
For decades, vast sections of Sumatra’s natural forest have been razed and converted for mining, palm oil plantations and pulpwood farms.
Around 1.4 million hectares of forest in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra were lost to deforestation between 2016 and 2025 alone, according to Indonesian environmental group WALHI, citing operations by 631 permit-holding companies.
Deforestation in Sumatra stripped away natural defenses that once absorbed rainfall and stabilized soil, making the island more vulnerable to extreme weather, said Riandra Purba, executive director of WALHI’s chapter in North Sumatra.
Purba said the Sumatra floods should serve as a “serious warning” for the government to issue permits more carefully.
“Balancing natural resource management requires a sustainable approach. We must not sacrifice natural benefits for the financial benefit of a select few,” he told Arab News.
“(The government) must evaluate all the environmental policies in the region … (and) implement strict monitoring, including law enforcement that will create a deterrent effect to those who violate existing laws.”
In Batang Toru, one of the worst-hit areas in North Sumatra where seven companies operate, hundreds of hectares had been cleared for gold mining and energy projects, leaving slopes exposed and riverbeds choked with sediment.
When torrential rains hit last month, rivers in the area were swollen with runoff and timber, while villages were buried or swept away.
As public outrage grew in the wake of the Sumatra floods, Indonesian officials, including Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq, have moved to review existing permits and investigate companies suspected of worsening the disaster.
“Our focus is to ensure whether company activities are influencing land stability and (increasing) risks of landslides or floods,” Nurofiq told Indonesian magazine Tempo on Saturday.
Sumatra’s natural forest cover stood at about 11.6 million hectares as of 2023, or about 24 percent of the island’s total area, falling short of the 30 to 33 percent forest coverage needed to maintain ecological balance.
The deadly floods and landslides in Sumatra also highlighted the urgency of disaster mitigation in Indonesia, especially amid the global climate crisis, said Kiki Taufik, forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia.
Over two weeks since floods and landslides inundated communities in Sumatra, a few villages remain isolated and over 800,000 people are still displaced.
“This tropical cyclone, Senyar, in theory, experts said that it has a very low probability of forming near the equator, but what we have seen is that it happened, and this is caused by rapid global warming … which is triggering hydrometeorological disasters,” Taufik told Arab News.
“The government needs to give more attention, and even more budget allocation, to mitigate disaster risks … Prevention is much more important than (disaster) management, so this must be a priority for the government.”
