To read Part 1 of this article, go here.
None of the founders of the country conceivably imagined that if the Attorney General is indeed the creature of the President, he would be ill-equipped to investigate, much less prosecute the President or his associates for wrongdoing, either before or during his presidency. It obviously didn’t occur to Hamilton, Madison or Jay that we might one day have a rogue President like Donald Trump with a life history of being one step ahead of the law, and little or no regard for presidential or constitutional norms.
Barr enjoys the dubious decision of being the most controversial Attorney General in history. He testified in his confirmation hearings that he would make law enforcement decisions based on the facts and the law “not on politics.” But, he quickly broke his promise and emerged as a political apparatchik, leaving a trail of decisions favorable to Trump and his political cronies that appear to have ignored both the facts and the law, and raise serious questions as to whether he has any independence from the President at all. Indeed, Barr not only embraced, but bedded down with, the controversial doctrine of the unitary executive. In a devastating Washington Postop-ed, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder found Barr “unfit” to hold the office because he failed to distance himself from the President:
Barr made the outlandish suggestion that Congress cannot entrust anyone but the President himself to execute the law. In Barr’s view, sharing executive power with anyone ‘beyond the control of the President,’ [emphasis Holder’s]… presumably including a semi-independent Cabinet member’ [the Attorney General], contravenes the Framers’ clear intent to vest that power in a single person.’ This is a stunning declaration … revealing of Barr’s own intent: to serve not at a careful remove from politics, as his office demands, but as an instrument of politics — under the direct “control” of President Trump.
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