‘The closest thing we have to Dick Cheney’: Legal experts explain how Barr is ‘putting his thumb on the scale’ for Trump

The New York Times on Monday published a deep-dive into the legal and political career of William Barr, purporting to show that Trump’s attorney general “is neither as apolitical as his defenders claim, nor as partisan as his detractors fear.” But the article also describes Barr’s deference to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, providing a number of examples related to the attorney general’s long-held belief in presidential powers — and effectively undermining claims he’s not as partisan as critics claim.

Last week, University of Michigan Law professor Julian David Mortensen published an essay in the Atlantic that challenged those who believe “executive power” grants the U.S. president  all “the prerogatives of a British king, except where the Constitution specifies otherwise.”

“‘The executive power’ granted at the American founding was conceptually, legally, and semantically incapable of conveying a reservoir of royal authority,” David Mortensen wrote. “The real meaning of executive power was something almost embarrassingly simple: the power to execute the law.”

View the complete June 10 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.