Tag: Bill Barr

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.

Prosecutor testifies on alleged politicization inside Barr’s Justice Department

Washington Post logoThe House Judiciary Committee heard testimony Wednesday from a federal prosecutor and another witness who have accused Attorney General William P. Barr and his top deputies of acting “based on political considerations” and a desire to appease President Trump.

Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland formerly detailed to the Russia investigation by special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, told the panel that prosecutors involved in the criminal trial of Trump’s friend Roger Stone experienced “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice” to give Stone “a break” by requesting a lighter sentence.

Zelinsky was joined by John Elias, an official in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, who said Barr ordered staff to investigate marijuana company mergers simply because of his “personal dislike” of the nature of their underlying business. 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.

Rudy Giuliani may be dropping hints about the real reason Bill Barr fired a US attorney

AlterNet logoThe last time Rudy Giuliani’s co-conspirator Lev Parnas spoke publicly was January 16, 2020, when he sat for interviews with both Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper. Along with providing details about Trump’s extortion efforts with the Ukrainian president, he made this rather explosive claim about the role of Attorney General William Barr in the Trump administration.

Parnas actually said that he was more frightened of people in our Justice Department than he was of the mobsters he was turning on in Ukraine.

Parnas’s trial was originally scheduled to begin in early October, but due to the coronavirus, it has been delayed until February 2021, well after the November election. The prosecutors that have been investigating this matter work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York—where Barr just ousted Geoffrey Berman. Continue reading.

Barr to testify in House oversight hearing next month

The Hill logoAttorney General William Barr will testify before the House Judiciary Committee next month as Democrats on the panel seek to investigate his decision to fire a top prosecutor in Manhattan.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec confirmed on Twitter that the president’s top law enforcement official will participate in a general oversight hearing in late July.

“The Attorney General has accepted an invitation to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a general oversight hearing on July 28th,” Kupec tweeted. Continue reading.

The Memo: Storm brewing after chaotic Berman firing

The Hill logoShock over the Trump administration’s firing of a top government prosecutor is reverberating across the political world, but not even the president’s foes are confident he will face consequences.

Legal experts — especially those critical of what they see as President Trump’s erosion of the independence of the justice system — are appalled at the firing of Geoffrey Berman in contentious circumstances.

Berman was spearheading a number of investigations that touched on the president and his circle in his role as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Continue reading.

Nadler to subpoena AG Barr over Berman firing

The Hill logoHouse Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) confirmed Monday night he plans to issue a subpoena to compel Attorney General Bill Barr to testify before Congress on July 2.

“We have begun the process to issue that subpoena. It is very much true. We are doing that,” Nadler said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” 

Democratic Judiciary staffers also held a conference call Monday and discussed the subpoena, said a source on the call. But Democrats said they expect Barr to ignore the subpoena. Continue reading.

Acting U.S. attorney in New York expected to advance politically sensitive cases, safeguard office’s independence, colleagues say

Donald Trump had a bad week. He went to West Point to make himself look like a strong leader but raised doubts about his health when he struggled drinking water and descending a ramp. His first Supreme Court appointee wrote the opinion in a case upholding gay and transgender rights.

The court also struck down Trump’s effort to deport undocumented foreigners brought here as children. His former national security advisor wrote a book painting the world’s most powerful person as an ignorant sleazebag who was guilty of the impeachment charges and more.

Trump had to reschedule a Tulsa rally planned for Juneteenth, but he insisted on holding it the following day — risking lives in a state suffering a surge of the coronavirus. New polls showed him trailing Joe Biden by landslide margins. Continue reading.

How Barr’s ‘enormous blind spot’ led to Trump’s ‘botched’ firing of SDNY prosecutor — and backed the president into a corner: NYT reporter

AlterNet logoNew York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman on Sunday broke down the Trump administration’s “botched” firing of Geoffrey Berman, telling CNN’s John King that Attorney General Bill Barr’s “enormous blind spot when it comes to politics” put Donald Trump in jeopardy.

Berman, the former U.S. attorney for the Souther District of New York who oversaw the prosecution of Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen, resigned from his post Saturday following a public standoff with Barr. On Friday, Berman contradicted Barr after the attorney general claimed he “stepped down” from his position following a meeting at a Manhattan hotel.

“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate,” Berman said Friday. Continue reading.

For Barr, Standoff With Prosecutor Adds to String of Miscues

New York Times logoThe attorney general has found himself at odds with the White House on high-profile issues in recent weeks.

WASHINGTON — From the onset of his tenure, William P. Barr has been billed as the attorney general that President Trump was looking for. And Mr. Barr has taken some pride in this role, telling Fox News this past weekend that he speaks with the president “very regularly.”

But for a man who projects unswerving confidence in his political and legal skills, his efforts this month to play presidential intimate have backfired, embarrassing both him and his boss.

The month has brought a string of unusually high-profile miscues for the attorney general. He has been at odds with the White House at critical moments, showing how even top administration officials known for their loyalty can fall out of sync with a president laser-focused on his own political popularity. Continue reading.