Jonathan Chait
In Terrifying Interview, William Barr Goes Full MAGA
After the legal Establishment had granted him the benefit of the doubt, Attorney General William Barr has shocked his erstwhile supporters with his aggressive and frequently dishonest interventions on behalf of President Trump. The spectacle of an esteemed lawyer abetting his would-be strongman boss’s every authoritarian instinct has left Barr’s critics grasping for explanations. Some have seized on the darker threads of his history in the Reagan and Bush administrations, when he misled the public about a secret Department of Justice memo and helped cover up the Iran-Contra scandal.
But Barr’s long, detailed interview with Jan Crawford suggests the rot goes much deeper than a simple mania for untrammeled Executive power. Barr has drunk deep from the Fox News worldview of Trumpian paranoia.
It is hard to convey how far over the edge Barr has gone without reading the entire interview, which lasted an hour. But a few key comments illustrate the depth of his investment in Trump’s perspective.
Barr, as he has done repeatedly, provides a deeply misleading account of what Robert Mueller found. “He did not reach a conclusion,” he says. “He provided both sides of the issue, and … his conclusion was he wasn’t exonerating the president, but he wasn’t finding a crime either.”
As Mueller stated in the report and again at his press conference, he felt bound by a policy preventing him from charging the president with a crime, or even saying the president had committed a crime. Mueller’s view is that his job vis-à-vis presidential misconduct is to describe the behavior and leave it up to Congress to decide if it’s a crime. Several hundred former federal prosecutors have stated, and Mueller clearly signaled, the actions he described in the Mueller report are crimes, or would be if the president could be charged with a crime.
More bed wetting here
Ohhhh these people are sick..
My fav
Barr hints repeatedly throughout the interview that he has seen secret evidence he cannot share that supports his sinister conclusion. “I have not gotten answers that are well satisfactory, and in fact probably have more questions, and that some of the facts that I’ve learned don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened,” he says. “That’s all I really will say. Things are just not jiving.”
Secret evidence …Like things that have not yet been fully declassified?
Its going to be a long hot summer.
@kitt:
Or “secret evidence,” as in “things I can say that will get Trump’s base riled up without having to actually produce anything to back it up”?
“Evidence.”
“Secret.”
There’s certainly no need for Jonathan Chait to zero his sights. His pen is already dead on target.
At least Barr didn’t say he had a mountain of evidence at his fingertips that would prove this or that. That would be a certain sign he is lying. We’ve seen that before, of course.
I wonder, whatever happened to “all that evidence” the Democrats had in their possession that PROVED Trump colluded with the Russians to win his election? Anything on that yet, @Greg: or @Michael: ? Ever get tired of being lied to by your lying Democrats on a regular basis? Ever wonder WHY?
@Deplorable Me: I will bet they cant even tell you what in the democrat platform they support. As the democrats evolve quickly into full blown socialism. The policies that have brought our metropolis cities to crumbling condition they want on national scale.
@kitt: Who but a “I never want to work and demand everything free” socialist liberal would admit to supporting any of their false promises?
The internet investigators are combing the Weissman report line by line now revealed they like to edit out sentences of context from transcripts. Without context how can this be he roadmap to impeachment?
Same scam they used to get a FISA warrant to spy on the campaign of DT, Page a fully cooperating FBI asset needed to be spied on, and using the 3 jump rule they can spy on the entire trump team, he did continue to have contact after the election hence the spying on the transition team.
Despite the testimony and documentation these liberals will try to make it sound like a conspiracy theory. The IG report, pages of biased actions and illegal activities, dont look there, just listen to this freak Chait. His background writing liberal fear mongering fantasies, obviously an expert on this important story in American history as it unfolds, a liberal “expert.”
@kitt: Yet our resident liberal apologists think this constitutes an actual investigation, real evidence and actual cause. Without lies, it is all nothing.
Meanwhile, Border Patrol is now apprehending large groups of AFRICANS (you know… where Ebola has been rampant) coming across our southern border. Democrats are more concerned about making up “evidence” and then using it against Trump than protecting the nation from crime and disease.
@Michael:Go sit down…..everything you think is true is a lie….everything you think is right is wrong…your make believe world is coming to an end…try to salvage some dignity ……
@Deplorable Me: I just want to give the old Levin line to this article.
Get off my blog, you idiot!
@Deplorable Me, #4:
He has a mountain of evidence and testimony diligently collected over the course of two years by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which he’s jealously guarding at his master’s bidding like Smaug atop his pile of loot. Even Congress cannot touch it. Nor can Congress question witnesses who provided that testimony. It’s not necessary, you see, because they’ve already been questioned and given testimony. Never mind that you can’t see it. Forget calling them in, because they’ve all been ordered to ignore congressional subpoenas.
It’s a massive cover-up effort of unprecedented scale, that has required the corruption of multiple governmental departments and the marginalizing of Congress and its oversight powers to pull off. It has required that subordinate government employees be ordered to break their oaths and break the law. How abysmally stupid or appallingly indifferent does someone have to be not to see this, or not to care?
Jonathan Chait sees, and cares, and for he has become a target. All who challenge Trump become a target. It doesn’t matter if they have honorably served the public for years, or are decorated war heroes, or are republican or democrat, or if they have seldom or never been known to lie. Their reputations and characters are viciously attacked, and Trump’s followers dutifully fall in behind like a lynch mob.
That’s what I see.
@Greg:
Though there is no doubt (we’ve seen much of it) that Barr indeed DOES have a mountain of evidence proving beyond any doubt that the FBI lied to the FISA court to get their warrants to begin spying on Trump and his campaign, that no one ever actually BELIEVED Trump colluded with Russians to affect the outcome of the 2016 election and that Democrats have been lying heavily on a regular basis to keep this charade going, you are well aware that I refer to the Rockies-worth of evidence all your whining Democrats SWORE they had at their very fingertips that PROVES beyond any doubt that Trump colluded with the Russians. Where’d it go, Greg? YOU believed in it; YOU promoted it… what happened to it? How could that much absolutely positive information just disappear… or never exist?
Without your answer to those questions, none of your other arguments about your dedication to other “evidence” against Trump has any credibility whatsoever.
You’ve been lied to, but apparently you prefer that to actual truth.
@Deplorable Me: Greg will be Greg or Greg will echo Madcow. At this time they are going through the evidence and determining what can be released to congress they will never see the Grand Jury testimony that will be the hook to continue the conspiracy, but all the witnesses called did not appear in front of a grand jury. There is a mountain of evidence 1.5 million documents provided by the White House alone. The Democrats are not the only ones who want to see things. I am wondering how much has been destroyed or “edited” There were phones wiped and reassigned. Then given to the IG with lame excuses. Nellie Ohr deleted Emails sent on her husbands FBI account, funny I never used My husbands email I could always make my own account. You would think there would be a rule or something against that it is a government account.
@Greg:
Thankfully not on the level we saw in the Obama era. But if you’re a Democrat, like you, your bias is going to skew your opinion and make it easily dismissed.
No one does character assassination like the Democratic Party. That a fact.
Protests:
Conservatives – bring bullhorns and water.
Liberals – bring bikelocks and journalists ready to edit footage to support their narrative. Also try to tie their enemy’s to nazis (Tea Party, any one that isn’t liberal, etc).
Blah blah. Anyone who has ever criticized or threatened to win an election against the Dems is a target, usually for manufactured cases of rape or racism. Dems are the nastier and less honest of the two parties, and that’s a fact.
Chait’s “caring” is just another annoying bit of dishonest propaganda. Conservatives are using Socialism as manufactured threat to support Trump? What!!!??
The Dems front-runner is promising socialism. That’s real. He got real support for it in 2016 (probably should have one the nomination if not of the DNC corruption) and still running on it today.
The basic farse is the Left’s perception/image of Trump vs what Trump actually is and has actually done. They keep lying, and repeating the same lies over and over again, and have bought into their own delusion.
The Democratic Parties primary tactic against any presidential candidate on the right is to accuse them of being a racist rapist Russian religious threat. Or crazy. Whatever it takes.
Teflon Don has survived all this garbage. He doesn’t have the blind following of Obama, and he is winning despite the media attacks.
They are in full panic mode, indeed. I can smell the fear…
Trump wins the EC and popular vote in 2020, easily. The electorate find him to be competent, and not a demagogue like Obama. Trump doesn’t not have rabid fans like Democratic candidates do, period. He’s proven he can do what he sets out to do, without tricks or deception. I’d break this blog by listing all of his achievements:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-historic-results-of-president-donald-j-trumps-first-two-years-in-office/
The Democrats are wrong, and they can only lie.