When the U.S. Senate voted to confirm William Barr as President Donald Trump’s attorney general, some optimists hoped he would bring a more traditional view of conservatism to the Trump Administration — noting that Barr had previously held the same position under President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s. But Barr has turned out to be a full-fledged Trump loyalist, and legal experts are lambasting him for becoming, in effect, Trump’s personal attorney during the Ukraine scandal and the president’s impeachment. Barr hasn’t been hiding his feelings on Trump’s impeachment, claiming that Democrats in Congress are “trivializing” impeachment and are using it as a “political tool.”
Journalist Alexandra Hutzler, in an article published by Newsweek on December 23, gathers some views from legal experts. One of them is attorney Nick Akerman, who told Newsweek, “This is a really strange situation with Barr, who has so many conflicts and is up to his eyeballs in all of the corruption surrounding Trump.”
Former federal prosecutor Michael J. Stern was equally critical, asserting that Barr’s loyalty to Trump is a “perversion” of his position as U.S. attorney general. Stern told Newsweek, “There is an inherent conflict in Barr’s designated role as the chief law enforcement officer of this country and his efforts to protect the man who gave him his job. It is unfortunate that Bill Barr never misses an opportunity to place his thumb on the scales of justice in favor of Donald Trump. That’s not how it is supposed to be.” Continue reading