Tag: Barr acting as Trump’s Roy Cohn

DOJ asks SCOTUS to delay case that would void ObamaCare and steal health care from millions until after election

AlterNet logoEven while promising to protect popular aspects of the Affordable Care Act behind the scenes President Donald Trump and his administration have been hard at work trying to kill ObamaCare.  The Dept. of Justice is supporting a lawsuit brought by Republican governors and state attorneys general that has already received a ruling finding the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The DOJ then asked the court to declare the entire law – all of ObamaCare – unconstitutional.

Now that case is moving to the Supreme Court, but the Trump administration knows if it kills the now-popular health care law that bears his predecessor’s name, they will lose the support of millions whose lives literally depend on it.

So on Friday the U.S. Dept. of Justice under Attorney General Bill Barr asked the Supreme Court to delay deciding if it will hear the case, so any subsequent ruling would be handed down after the November, 2020 election. Continue reading.

William Barr, Trump’s Sword and Shield

The Attorney General’s mission to maximize executive power and protect the Presidency.

Last October, Attorney General William Barr appeared at Notre Dame Law School to make a case for ideological warfare. Before an assembly of students and faculty, Barr claimed that the “organized destruction” of religion was under way in the United States. “Secularists, and their allies among the ‘progressives,’ have marshalled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values,” he said. Barr, a conservative Catholic, blamed the spread of “secularism and moral relativism” for a rise in “virtually every measure of social pathology”—from the “wreckage of the family” to “record levels of depression and mental illness, dispirited young people, soaring suicide rates, increasing numbers of angry and alienated young males, an increase in senseless violence, and a deadly drug epidemic.” Continue reading “William Barr, Trump’s Sword and Shield”

John Durham has a stellar reputation for investigating corruption. Some fear his work for Barr could tarnish it.

Washington Post logoWhen the U.S. government needed a prosecutor to ferret out corruption in its own law-enforcement and intelligence ranks, John Durham was its go-to guy. The longtime prosecutor helped exonerate men wrongly convicted on murder charges, exposed an FBI agent tied to one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters and dug into the CIA’s destruction of video tapes thought to show foreign detainees being tortured.

But some of Durham’s actions in his latest high-profile assignment — examining the FBI’s 2016 investigation of President Trump’s campaign — have sparked a debate in Washington about whether he is even-handedly assessing possible wrongdoing, or carrying out a conservative political errand.

Last week, after the Justice Department inspector general released a report concluding the bureau had adequate cause to open the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, Durham issued a remarkable public statement registering his disagreement.

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Bill Barr finally revealed the real reason he’s such an aggressive Trump defender

AlterNet logoAttorney General Bill Barr has become a lightning rod of sorts in administration, standing out front and taking public hits as he does President Donald Trump’s dirty work at the Justice Department.

Far from being the institutionalist even many critics of Trump hoped Barr would be, the attorney general showed his true colors when he spun Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the conclusions of the Russia investigation. Mueller and his team so objected to that presentation that they sent Barr a letter arguing that the report had been distorted to the public. Barr later said that the letter was “snitty.” Since the end of the Mueller investigation, Barr has repeatedly and consistently proven himself to be a fierce defender of the president’s interests, regardless of the consequence of U.S. institutions.

So what, exactly, does Barr think he’s doing? Why is the attorney general acting like the personal attorney of the president? In a new interview this week, Barr finally gave a clear reason why, from his perspective, he acts the way he does.

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Justice Dept Inspector Urges Change To Allow Probe Of Attorney General

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) elicited an important and revealing response from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Wednesday when she raised the prospect of Attorney General Bill Barr’s potential wrongdoing.

Harris noted that one of Barr’s ongoing investigations was “launched to do the bidding of President Trump, [and] has two objectives: One, to undermine the integrity of our intelligence community; the goal, to cast doubt on the finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in order to benefit the Trump campaign. And two: to intimidate the men and women of our intelligence committee by suggesting that our national security professionals will face serious consequences if they investigate wrongdoing on the part of this president or his operatives.”

She said that Horowitz has an obligation “to investigate misconduct committed by the attorney general of the United States, who is doing the bidding of the president to undermine our intelligence community. I trust you take that duty seriously.”

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Former Attorney General Eric Holder Shreds William Barr As ‘Unfit,’ ‘Incapable’

Holder accused Barr of taking actions that are “so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official.”

Former Attorney General Eric Holder was unequivocal in his criticism of William Barr, the current attorney general of the United States, in a searing op-ed published in The Washington Post on Wednesday.

Holder, who served as the country’s top law enforcement officer from 2009 to 2015 and as deputy attorney general from 1997 to 2001, accused Barr of shameless partisanship and of having behaved in a way that’s “fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution.”

Barr is “incapable” of serving effectively as attorney general, Holder said.

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Lock her up? Trump’s AG complains that people who want to send their adversaries ‘to jail’ are ‘poisoning the system’

AlterNet logoOn the day House Democrats announced the specific articles of impeachment they plan to pursue against President Donald Trump, Attorney General William Barr discussed Trump’s 2016 campaign and the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference during a live Tuesday interview with the Wall Street Journal. Barr was highly critical of the FBI’s 2016 activities in relation to Trump’s campaign, describing them as a “travesty.”

Barr also asserted that those wanting to send their political rivals “to jail” are “poisoning the system.” Trump’s attorney general was referring to the president’s critics, but one thing he didn’t criticize was the “lock her up” chants aimed at Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by his supporters.

The attorney general disagreed with the findings of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz: in a report released on Monday, Horowitz found that the FBI acted ethically and responsibly in its 2016 investigation. But Barr disagrees. And earlier in the day in a separate interview, Barr told NBC News, “I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press.”

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Bill Barr attacks FBI for ‘bad faith’ probe of Trump campaign in stunning interview

AlterNet logoAttorney General Bill Barr attacked the FBI for investigating the Trump campaign’s multiple contacts with Russian agents during the 2016 presidential campaign as being a “bad faith” probe.

In an interview with NBC News, Barr outlined why he disagreed with Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s conclusion that the FBI was justified in launching its investigation into the Trump campaign.

“I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr said. “I think there were gross abuses…and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI. I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith.”

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Barr criticizes FBI, says it’s possible agents acted in ‘bad faith’ in Trump probe

The Hill logoAttorney General William Barr on Tuesday offered stern criticism of the FBI over its investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016, disputing a Justice Department inspector general’s report one day earlier and saying it is possible the bureau acted in “bad faith.”

Barr in an interview with NBC News also elaborated on his disagreement with a key conclusion of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report that the investigation was justified, saying he doesn’t believe the evidence backed up the steps that were taken.

“Here, I felt this was very flimsy,” Barr said. “I think when you step back here and you say, ‘What was this all based on,’ it’s not sufficient.”

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Barr: Horowitz report shows FBI launched Trump campaign investigation on ‘thinnest of suspicions’

The Hill logoAttorney General William Barr said that a newly released Justice Department watchdog report showed that the FBI launched an “intrusive” investigation of President Trump‘s campaign “on the thinnest of suspicions.” 

Barr also said that the report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz showed that, in his opinion, the FBI had an “insufficient” basis to justify steps taken in the investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016, putting him at odds with Horowitz, who concluded in the report that the bureau had an “authorized purpose” to open the investigation.

“It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration,” Barr said.

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