January 15, 2019: Nominee for Attorney General Bitch Slaps the President

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: The post below, for 1/15/19 is accurately reported, but it would appear I badly misjudged Mr. Barr. For most of the following year, Barr seemed to be more an enabler for the president than an Attorney General committed to the rule of law. 

Save for A. Mitchell Palmer, who held the same post from 1919 to 1921, and John Mitchell, who served under President Nixon, Mr. Barr might go down as the worst Attorney General in U.S. history. 

Only later, in the period from November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021, did he redeem himself, to an extent, by refusing to go along with President Trump’s absurd “stolen election” lie. His answers below, in that context, at least, still ring true.

 

1/15/19: If you were unable to make time to watch the confirmation hearings for William Barr, the president’s nominee for Attorney General, the sound you heard was the repeated bitch-slapping Barr was delivering the president. 

We already knew Trump was having a hard week/month/year/first (and only) term in office. It couldn’t have felt any better if he was listening to Barr answer questions before a Senate panel. 

 

Not a witch hunt. Sorry. 

Not all experts agree that Barr has managed to put to rest the concerns of Democratic senators and voters. But only the greatest suck ups (Hannity, Pirro) could be telling the president tonight that what Barr said during the hearings offered validation of his basic position. 

Barr was asked if he believed Robert Mueller was engaged in a “witch hunt.” Trump has ranted about a “witch hunt” a thousand times since taking office and, one could assume, talks about the “witch hunt” in his sleep. 

Barr replied that he didn’t believe Mueller was the type who “would be involved in a witch hunt [emphasis added unless otherwise noted].” 

Slap!!

 

Barr admitted that he met with Trump in the summer of 2017 to discuss a role with the president’s legal defense team. He said the meeting was brief. He declined to join. Trump asked what Mueller was like. “I said,” Barr told the senators, “Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as such.” He and Mueller were “good friends,” he assured the panel. He and his wife “would be good friends” with Mueller and his wife long after the Russia probe ended. 

Slap! Slap!

 

If Trump’s orange cheeks weren’t already stinging, Barr was asked about former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself. Trump had howled about that for a year, until the day after the midterm elections, he fired Sessions. Barr offered the opinion that Sessions “probably did the right thing.” 

SLAP!!

 

Well, then, senators wondered, did the nominee think Trump’s current lawyer, Horndog Rudy, was correct that any report from Mueller should be handed over to the White House “for correction” before it was submitted to Congress? 

“That’s not going to happen,” Barr responded. 

SLAP!!!

 

The smacks kept coming. Barr said it was “vitally important” that Mueller be allowed to complete his work. Would it be a problem, a Democratic senator inquired, if the president offered a pardon in return for silence from a witness in this investigation? Barr said that would constitute “obstruction of justice.” 

Would he ever carry out an order to fire Mueller without good cause? 

“If any president attempts to intervene in a matter he has a stake in to protect himself that should first be looked at as a breach of his constitutional duties,” Barr replied. 

He posed what he described as an “easy” hypothetical. If a president ever intervened to halt an investigation into his family or business, “That would be a breach of his obligation under the Constitution to faithfully execute the law.” 

Finally, what would Barr do if ordered to remove Mueller to shut down a legitimate investigation? 

Barr said without hesitation, he would resign. 

Slap! SLAP! SLAP! SLAPPITY SLAP!!

 

We can’t know for sure, but I suspect, if Trump was still listening at that point, that he fainted dead away. For the next twenty hours, not a creature was heard stirring in the White House. 

Trump’s Twitter feed went silent.

A real witch hunt: Salem, Massachusetts, 1692.

 

*

“What it’s like to work for a madman.”

 IN RELATED NEWS, Special Counsel Mueller filed a fresh set of court documents. Rick Gates, former Trump campaign adviser, is still cooperating in “several investigations.”  

Finally, the Wall Street Journal reports that former Trump confidant Michael Cohen plans to testify in front of Congress and air all the dirty laundry he helped wash, dry and fold over the past decade. Sources say he will relate “the story of what it’s like to work for a madman.” “He’s going to say things,” a person close to Cohen says, “that will give you chills.” 

Or, as one liberal pundit put it, there are now two parallel stories playing out related to the president. 

Cohen’s story is a soap opera. 

Mueller’s is a spy novel.