Tag: Barr helping Trump become a dictator

Justice Dept. Opens Criminal Inquiry Into John Bolton’s Book

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Investigators are examining whether the former national security adviser illegally disclosed classified information.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether President Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton unlawfully disclosed classified information in a memoir this summer, an inquiry that the department began after it failed to stop the book’s publication, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The department has convened a grand jury, which issued a subpoena for communications records from Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Mr. Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.” The Javelin Agency, which represents Mr. Bolton, also received a subpoena, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry is a significant escalation of the turmoil over the publication of the book, whose highly unflattering account of Mr. Bolton’s 17 months in the White House prompted Mr. Trump to attack him and call for his prosecution even as the Justice Department sued earlier to try to stop its release. Continue reading.

Analysts say Barr is eroding Justice Department independence — without facing any real personal consequence

Washington Post logoA federal prosecutor’s testimony Wednesday that he was pressed by supervisors to offer a more lenient sentencing recommendation for a friend of President Trump’s capped a remarkable four-month stretch in which Attorney General William P. Barr has seemed to repeatedly bend the Justice Department to Trump’s political interests — generating significant controversy but no personal consequence, legal analysts said.

Since February, Barr has intervened in two criminal cases to the benefit of those who once advised Trump; ousted a U.S. attorney who is investigating Trump’s personal lawyer; and dutifully implemented Trump’s vision for a forceful crack down on demonstrators in the District protesting police violence.

Democrats and legal observers have decried the moves — calling on Barr to resign or be investigated by his agency’s internal watchdog — and morale inside the Justice Department has plummeted, according to several Justice Department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly. But lawmakers, who already held Barr in contempt last year for defying congressional subpoenas, seem to have little in the way of practical recourse. Continue reading.

5 takeaways from the scathing testimony about William Barr’s Justice Department

Washington Post logoThe Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr has made several controversial and extraordinary decisions with regard to President Trump and his allies. And two of those decisions came to a head Wednesday.

First came a federal court ruling that the case against Michael Flynn should be dropped after Barr’s Justice Department moved to withdraw its prosecution — despite Flynn already having pleaded guilty. Arguably the more interesting development came Wednesday afternoon, when a former prosecutor on the Roger Stone case testified that political pressure was indeed behind the Justice Department’s reduction in Stone’s sentencing recommendation.

Aaron Zelinsky was one of four prosecutors who withdrew from the case when that decision was made, and in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, he detailed what happened. Continue reading.

The Barr Memo and the Imperial Presidency

NOTE:  This is “an oldie, but a goodie” article from the American Constitution Society about Bill Barr’s beliefs about the American presidency. With what we’re hearing from people inside the Justice Department and the firing of qualified attorneys for Trump hacks, it’s worth posting.

Last summer, William Barr wrote a memo for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Steve Engel.  The memo had to do with the Mueller investigation and whether President Trump can be understood to have violated the obstruction of justice statute (spoiler alert:  his answer was an emphatic “no”).  Because William Barr is Trump’s nominee to be Attorney General, the memo has been the focus of attention for what it says about the Mueller investigation and for what it directly implies about that investigation (more spoilers:  (1) Trump can take over, manipulate, or terminate the investigation, and (2) don’t hold your breath waiting to see a Mueller report).

If possible, I would like to focus attention elsewhere – on the ramifications of Mueller’s theory of the President’s constitutional powers for the rest of the government.  Those ramifications are vast and proceed from the memo’s most jaw-dropping passage:  “Constitutionally, it is wrong to conceive of the President as simply the highest officer within the Executive branch hierarchy.  He alone is the Executive branch.”[1]

The conception of presidential power embraced in the Barr Memo goes well beyond the ordinary unitary executive claims.  I have taken to calling it the imperial executive, in part because no Attorney General has ever come so close to accepting Louis XIV’s motto, “L’etat c’est moi.” This theory revives the view of executive power that launched a thousand signing statements, generated the torture memo, and justified warrantless domestic surveillance in spite of the legal prohibitions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  It is impossible to conceive of all the damage this theory will do in the hands of the Trump Administration, and a full catalog would require a book length post.  I would, nonetheless, like to highlight a few implications that strike me as immediately obvious. Continue reading.