Attorney General William Barr

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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 15, 2019 9:57 am

Barr’s Playbook: He Misled Congress When Omitting Parts of Justice Dep’t Memo in 1989
Ryan Goodman
On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the “Black Friday” market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.

When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.

What’s different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out.

When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions. It is better to think of Barr’s summary as a redacted version of the full OLC opinion. That’s because the “summary” took the form of 13 pages of written testimony. The document was replete with quotations from court cases, legal citations, and the language of the OLC opinion itself. Despite its highly detailed analysis, this 13-page version omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion. And there was evidently no justifiable reason for having withheld those parts from Congress or the public.

Public and Congressional pressure mounts

When first asked by reporters about the OLC opinion that Friday, Barr said he could not discuss any of its contents. “I just don’t discuss the work of the office of legal counsel,” he said. “The office … provides legal advice throughout the Administration and does it on a confidential basis.”

The idea that Barr and the administration would not even discuss the content of the opinion could not withstand public pressure. Barr’s stance was especially untenable because his OLC opinion reversed a prior OLC opinion (an unusual event), and the Justice Department had released that prior opinion in full to the public just four years earlier.

President George H.W. Bush was asked about the Barr legal opinion at a news conference on the day the story broke. “The FBI can go into Panama now?,” a reporter asked in connection with the legal opinion. Bush responded that he was “embarrassed” not to know about the OLC opinion. “I’ll have to get back to you with the answer,” the president said.

Within hours, Secretary of State James Baker tried to make some reassuring public comments about the content of the OLC opinion. “This is a very narrow legal opinion based on consideration only of domestic United States law.” Baker said. “It did not take into account international law, nor did it weigh the President’s constitutional responsibility to carry out the foreign policy of the United States.”

It’s not known whether Baker had first cleared his statement with the Justice Department as is often the case for such matters. But his description of the OLC opinion would turn out to be not just misleading, but false.

The Chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, Rep. Don Edwards, then wrote to the Attorney General requesting the opinion, but he was rebuffed. An assistant attorney general wrote back. “We are unable to provide you with a copy of the 1989 opinion because it is the established view of the Department of Justice that current legal advice by the Office of Legal Counsel is confidential,” she stated. But there was no categorical prohibition, as Barr himself would later admit in testifying before Congress. The assistant attorney general’s letter itself included one glaring counterexample. “I am enclosing a copy of the 1980 opinion,” she wrote, and she noted that the Department had released the 1980 opinion to the public in 1985.

So why not release the 1989 opinion? Was there something to hide?

Barr provides a “redacted opinion” to Congress

On the morning of Nov. 8, 1989, Barr came to Congress to testify before Rep. Edwards’ subcommittee. Some of the events that unfolded also bear a remarkable resemblance to Barr’s handling of the Mueller report to date.

First, Barr started out by saying that the history of internal Justice Department rules was a basis for not handing over the full opinion to Congress. “Chairman. Since its inception, the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinions have been treated as confidential,” Barr said.

That statement was misleading or false, and Chairman Edwards knew it.

Edwards quickly pointed out that the Department had released a compendium of opinions for the general public, including the 1980 one that Barr’s secret opinion reversed. “Up until 1985 you published them, and I have it in front of me—‘Opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel’—the previous opinion.”

Barr retreated. “It has been the long established policy of OLC that except in very exceptional circumstances, the opinions must remain confidential,” Barr replied. The reference to “very exceptional circumstances” backtracked from what Barr had just said and what the letter sent to Rep. Edwards by the assistant attorney general had claimed.

But even the assertion that OLC opinions were released only in “very exceptional circumstances” could not withstand scrutiny. The Justice Department had shared OLC opinions with Congress on many occasions during the 1980s, as a letter by Rep. Edwards to the Justice Department later detailed.

Barr then pointed out his willingness to provide Congress with “our conclusions and our reasoning.” This was the 13-page written testimony which contained a detail recounting of the views expressed in the OLC opinion. Chairman Edwards complained that Barr had violated the rules of the House by submitting his written testimony only that same morning of the hearing, rather than 48 hours in advance. Barr’s timing meant that members of the committee and their staff were not well equipped to analyze or question the OLC’s analysis. But at least they had the OLC’s views in writing. Or did they?

Barr’s description of the OLC’s views included that as a matter of domestic law the President has the authority to authorize actions by the FBI in foreign countries in violation of customary international law.

Without the benefit of the OLC opinion, Professor Koh explained how Barr could be hiding important matters by asking Congress and the public to trust just the 13-page version. Koh wrote:

“Barr’s continuing refusal to release the 1989 opinion left outsiders with no way to tell whether it rested on factual assumptions that did not apply to the earlier situation, which part of the earlier opinion had not been overruled, or whether the overruling opinion contained nuances, subtleties, or exceptions that Barr’s summary in testimony simply omitted.”

Koh’s words proved prescient.

What Barr left out of his report to Congress

I am not the first to notice that Barr’s testimony omitted parts of the OLC opinion that would have earned the Justice Department scorn from the halls of Congress, legal experts, and the public.

Over one and a half years after his testimony, Congress finally subpoenaed Barr’s 1989 opinion. Another House Judiciary subcommittee issued the subpoena on July 25, 1991. The administration first resisted, but within a week agreed that members of Congress could see the full opinion. That same month, the Washington Post’s Michael Isikoff obtained a copy of the OLC opinion. The Clinton administration, within its first year in office, then published the OLC opinion in 1993 making it publicly available for the first time.

Omission 1: President’s authority to violate the U.N. Charter

Isikoff was drawn to a major issue that Barr had not disclosed in his testimony. The 1989 opinion asserted that the President could violate the United Nations Charter because such actions are “fundamentally political questions.”

That proposition is a very difficult one to sustain, and as Brian Finucane and Marty Lederman have explained, Barr was wrong. The 1989 opinion ignored the President’s constitutional duty to “take care” that US laws, including ratified treaties, be faithfully executed. And the opinion conflated the so-called political question doctrine, which is about whether courts can review an executive branch action, with the question whether an executive branch action is authorized or legal.

What’s more important for our purposes is not whether the 1989 opinion was wrong on this central point, but the fact that Barr failed to disclose this “principal conclusion” to Congress.

There was a reason Isikoff considered the conclusion about the U.N. Charter newsworthy. That’s because it had not been known before. The leading analysis of the Barr opinion is in a forthcoming article in Cornell Law Review by Finucane. He observes, “The members of the subcommittee appear to have been unaware of the opinion’s treatment of the U.N. Charter and the witnesses did not volunteer this information during the hearing.”

Professor Jeanne Woods, in a 1996 law review article in Boston University International Law Journal, also observed the large discrepancy between Barr’s 13-page testimony and what it failed to disclose. “Barr’s congressional testimony attempted to gloss over the broad legal and policy changes that his written opinion advocated.… A careful analysis of the published opinion, and the reasoning underlying it, however, reveals the depth of its deviation from accepted norms,” Professor Woods wrote.

Omission 2: Presumption that acts of Congress comply with international law

Woods also noted that the OLC opinion failed to properly apply the so-called “Charming Betsy” method for interpreting statutes. That canon of statutory construction comes from an 1804 decision, Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, in which the Supreme Court stated, “an act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains.” In other words, Congress should be presumed to authorize only actions that are consistent with U.S. obligations under international law. As Professor Curtis Bradley has written, since 1804 “this canon of construction has become an important component of the legal regime defining the U.S. relationship with international law. It is applied regularly by the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and it is enshrined in the black-letter-law provisions of the influential Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States.”

Barr’s opinion not only failed to apply the Charming Betsy presumption in favor of international law; the opinion applied what might be called a “reverse Charming Betsy.” Barr had reasoned that “in the absence of an explicit restriction” concerning international law, the congressional statute should be read to authorize the executive branch to violate international law. “Because, as part of his law enforcement powers, the President has the inherent authority to override customary international law, it must be presumed that Congress intended to grant the President’s instrumentality the authority to act in contravention of international law when directed to do so,” the opinion stated (emphasis added).

That part of the OLC’s analysis has not withstood the test of time. Indeed, there was good reason to keep it buried.

Omission 3: International law on abductions in foreign countries

Finally, Barr’s testimony failed to inform Congress that the 1989 opinion discussed international law.

Barr’s written testimony said that the opinion “is strictly a legal analysis of the FBI’s authority, as a matter of domestic law, to conduct extraterritorial arrests of individuals for violations of U.S. law.” During the hearing he added that “the opinion did not address … how specific treaties would apply in a given context.” The State Department’s legal adviser who appeared alongside Barr supported this characterization of the opinion by saying:

“The Office of Legal Counsel, as the office within the Department of Justice responsible for articulating the Executive Branch view of domestic law, recently issued an opinion concerning the FBI’s domestic legal authority to conduct arrests abroad without host country consent. Mr. Barr has summarized its conclusions for you. As Mr. Barr has indicated, that opinion addressed a narrow question — the domestic legal authority to make such arrests…. My role today is to address issues not discussed in the OLC opinion — the international law and foreign policy implications of a nonconsensual arrest in a foreign country.”

But the OLC opinion had addressed some questions of international law and how a specific treaty—the U.N. Charter—might apply in such contexts. The 1980 opinion, which the 1989 one reversed, included strong statements about the international legal prohibition on abductions in other countries without the state’s consent. In analyzing Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the 1980 opinion quoted from a famous United Nations Security Council resolution which condemned the abduction of Adolph Eichmann in Argentina by Israeli forces. The 1980 OLC opinion stated, “Commentators have construed this action to be a definitive construction of the United Nations Charter as proscribing forcible abduction in the absence of acquiescence by the asylum state.”

The OLC’s 1989 opinion took a very different view. It stated, “The text of Article 2(4) does not prohibit extraterritorial law enforcement activities, and we question whether Article 2(4) should be construed as generally addressing these activities.” The opinion also engaged in what many legal experts would consider controversial if not clearly wrong claims about international law. As one example, the 1989 opinion stated, “because sovereignty over territory derives not from the possession of legal title, but from the reality of effective control, logic would suggest there would be no violation of international law in exercising law enforcement activity in foreign territory over which no state exercises effective control.” The fact that the opinion had to resort to such a claim of “logic,” rather than jurisprudence or the practice and legal views of states, indicated its shallowness.

In fairness to Barr, these statements of international law were not the principal conclusions of the opinion. And, once again, it is not so relevant to our purposes whether these statements of law were wrong. What’s relevant is that Barr represented to Congress in his written and oral testimony that the OLC opinion did not address these legal issues, even though it did.

* * *

In the final analysis, Barr’s efforts in 1989 did not serve the Justice Department well. He had long left government service when the OLC opinion was finally made public. The true content of the opinion, given what Barr told the American people and testified before Congress, remains much to the discredit of the Attorney General.
https://www.justsecurity.org/63635/barr ... o-in-1989/
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 16, 2019 10:05 am

Should William Barr Recuse Himself From Mueller Report? Legal Experts Say Attorney General's Ties to Russia Are Troubling
By Cristina Maza On 4/15/19 at 3:30 PM EDT
PER_Barr_01_1084905694
Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty
Here they go again.

Attorney General William Barr is already under fire for his March letter to Congress, which reported the results of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in a way many feel was mostly beneficial to President Donald Trump.

Now, Democrats are taking aim at Barr’s recent congressional testimony in which he slipped in his opinion that federal law enforcement officials may have “spied” on his boss’ successful presidential run.

But if that wasn’t enough, some experts argue that Barr’s previous work in the private sector could conflict with his continuing supervision of the investigation into Russian tampering in the 2016 election campaign.

Why? A few of Barr’s previous employers are connected to key subjects in the probe. And some argue that, even if Barr didn’t break any rules, his financial ties to companies linked to aspects of the Russia investigation raise questions about whether he should—like his predecessor, Jeff Sessions—recuse himself.

“The legal standard is really clear about these issues. It’s not about actual conflict, it’s about the appearance of a conflict, about the appearance of bias,” Jed Shugerman, a professor at Fordham University’s School of Law and an expert on judicial and government ethics, tells Newsweek . “The problem is that we have so many flagrant conflicts that are so obvious, we get distracted from what the legal standard is.”

This much is known: On Barr’s public financial disclosure report, he admits to working for a law firm that represented Russia’s Alfa Bank and for a company whose co-founders allegedly have long-standing business ties to Russia. What’s more, he received dividends from Vector Group, a holding company with deep financial ties to Russia.

These facts didn’t get much attention during Barr’s confirmation hearing, as Congress was hyperfocused on an unsolicited memo Barr wrote prior to his nomination, which criticized the special counsel’s investigation—and whether he would release an unredacted Mueller report to Congress. Much of the information is public, but it has so far been unreported in relation to Barr.

Still, Barr’s potential conflicts could face further scrutiny as Democrats in Congress fight to have the Mueller report released to the public.

By the time you read this, the report may indeed be in the hands of Congress. But legal battles are expected over how much of the document will be redacted to protect grand jury material and other information. And no matter what appears in Barr’s color-coded version of the report, his motives will continue to be questioned.

“All of this raises the need for further inquiry from an independent review, not a Department of Justice investigation,” Michael Frisch, ethics counsel for Georgetown University’s law school and an expert in professional ethics, tells Newsweek . Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project for Government Oversight, says that Barr is probably playing within the rules. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t recuse himself.

“He’s not doing anything illegal. [But] is it good practice, given that he might have been involved with these entities in private practice? Probably not,” Amey added.

The Department of Justice did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Nonetheless, here’s a pocket guide to Barr’s Russian connections.

Vector Group
On his financial disclosure report, Barr notes that he earned anywhere from $5,001 to $15,000 in dividends from the Vector Group.

The company’s president, Howard Lorber, brought Trump to Moscow in the 1990s to seek investment projects there. The trip is widely seen as the first of many attempts to establish a Trump Tower in Moscow.

The problem, says Shugerman, “is the appearance of bias.”

He added that Donald Trump Jr. “allegedly called Lorber as he was setting up the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian [lawyer]. Lorber has extensive ties to Russia and was allegedly assisting with Trump Tower Moscow plans. On top of Barr’s other choices, which reflect partisan bias, it is bad judgment…to have any financial ties to a person so directly entangled with Trump, Don Jr. and the core of events and questions of the Russia investigation.”

Alfa Bank
Barr’s former law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he was counsel from March 2017 until he was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019, represented Russia’s Alfa Bank. (Barr earned more than $1 million at Kirkland.)

Barr also supervises, at Justice, another Kirkland & Ellis alumnus with Alfa ties. Early last year, Trump nominated Kirkland & Ellis partner Brian Benczkowski to the Justice Department’s criminal division. In his role with the law firm, Benczkowski had represented Alfa Bank and supervised an investigation into suspicious online communications between the bank and servers belonging to the Trump Organization.

Investigators found no evidence that the Trump Organization had communicated with Alfa. Still, the bank is partially owned by Russian oligarch German Khan, whose son-in-law, the London-based lawyer Alexander van der Zwaan, was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to investigators about a report his firm had written for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Benczkowski was confirmed last July as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division.

“In terms of a lawyer’s professional codes, it’s definitely legally significant if [Barr] is in counsel position,” Frisch tells Newsweek . “If he is counsel to the company and he isn’t personally working on a matter but the company is, the company’s conflicts are imputed to him.”

PER_Barr_03_513722182 A branch of Alfa Bank in Minsk, Belarus Viktor Drachev/TASS/Getty

Och-Ziff
Questions have also been raised about whether Och-Ziff Capital Management, a hedge fund where Barr was a board director from 2016 to 2018, may also be too closely connected to the Russia investigation.

The billionaire Ziff brothers, Dirk, Robert and Daniel, provided seed money to hedge fund manager Daniel Och to start the firm in 1992. They retained a small stake in the company after it went public in 2007.

The brothers are also a subject of interest to the Russian government because of their work with billionaire William Browder, a financier who ran afoul of the Kremlin.

PER_Barr_02_454463330 Browder, a financier who ran afoul of the Kremlin. Harry Borden/Contour/Getty

Natalia Veselnitskaya—the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr.; Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner; and Manafort in the now infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting—mentioned the Ziff brothers during her meeting as part of the promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. (Browder tells Newsweek that Veselnitskaya had mentioned the Ziff brothers only because of their association with him. “It was purely directed at me, and they had the misfortune of being associated with me,” Browder said.)

PER_Barr_04_813095220 Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer YURY MARTYANOV/AFP/Getty

Some experts argue that Barr’s work for Och-Ziff creates the appearance of a conflict of interest because the Russian government’s interest in the brothers was a component of the investigation.

“The fact that Veselnitskaya is in a meeting, that’s the Trump Tower meeting, talking about Browder and Browder’s associates, there’s a question about this meeting and the focus on Browder and the Ziff brothers. That is ground zero of the collusion question,” Shugerman said.

Deutsche Bank
Yup, them again.

Barr has significant assets, between $100,000 and $250,000, with Deutsche Bank, which was the only bank that would lend to Trump when all other banks viewed him as too hot to handle. The bank has also been implicated in Russian money-laundering scandals. Two congressional committees are now looking into Trump’s business ties to Deutsche Bank.

It is unclear if Barr has divested from Vector Group or pulled his assets out of Deutsche Bank since he became attorney general.

The Verdict?
So are all these cases grounds for Barr’s recusal? Has he crossed ared line?

“It would depend on his personal involvement. Did he profit from this in any way?” Larry Noble, a democracy and ethics expert and former counsel for the Federal Election Commission, tells Newsweek . “It’s a little bit concerning generally with this administration because everybody seems to have some connection somehow to people involved with Russian investment or Russia at some point.”

Don’t, as they say, touch that dial.
https://www.newsweek.com/so-many-confli ... me-1396435
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:31 am

Craig Unger


1/Fascinating that AG William Barr should have $ ties to Howard Lorber's Vector Group. As I reported in #HouseofTrump, House of Putin, during his 1996 trip to Moscow, Trump was accompanied by Lorber and partner Bennett LeBow who had ties to very interesting people in Mosco

I wrote about Attorney General William Barr's financial ties to Russia and work for entities connected to the Russia investigation, including dividends from Howard Lorber's Vector Group and work for the law firm representing Alfa Bank https://www.newsweek.com/so-many-confli ... me-1396435

2/ LeBow, in turn, partnered w Vadim Rabinovich who had recent participated in famous Tel Aviv meeting of mobsters at which Ukrainian energy trade was ceded to mob boss Semion #Mogilevich.

Image
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3/ Once in Moscow, Trump, Lorber & LeBow were shown around by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who was also allegedly tied to #Mogilevich.

Image
https://twitter.com/craigunger/status/1 ... 7291105281



Jed Shugerman


THREAD: Barr's Conflicts:
Outstanding by @CrisLeeMaza on Bill Barr's financial ties to Russia-related entities:
1. Howard Lorber's Vector Group (@DonaldJTrumpJr allegedly called Lorber about Trump Tower meeting)
2. AlfaBank
3. Ochs-Ziff
4. DeutscheBank.



2/ This isn't evidence of actual bias, but that's not the standard.
As I told @CrisLeeMaza, “The legal standard is not actual conflict, it’s about the appearance of a conflict, appearance of bias."
A remarkable number of Russia-related ties raises concerns about Barr's judgment.

3/ Howard Lorber's Vector:
Barr earned $5K-$15K in dividends. Based on what sized investment?
Lorber brought Trump to Moscow in the 1990s, and he's tied to Trump Tower Moscow.
@DonaldJTrumpJr allegedly called Lorber about Trump Tower meeting w/ Russian agent. ("I love it.")

4/ Alfa Bank:
Georgetown's Michael Frisch: “In terms of a lawyer’s prof. codes, it’s definitely legally significant if [Barr] is in counsel position. If he is counsel & ... he isn’t personally working on a matter but the company is, the company’s conflicts are imputed to him.”

5/ Och-Ziff:
Veselnitskaya focused on Browder and the Prevezon case, for which she was indicted. (Manafort's Tower notes mention Browder). Browder is connected to the Ziff brothers, and the Russian govt had been focused intently on the ZIffs:


6/ Barr was a board director of Och-Ziff Capital Management from 2016 to 2018.
Ziff pays a role in one of the core events in the Russia investigation (Browder/Magnitsky/Trump Tower). I'm not sure if it creates an actual bias, but it raises questions about an appearance of bias.

7/ Last but not least: DeutscheBank
"Barr has significant assets ($100K-$250K) with DeutscheBank, the only bank that would lend to Trump... The bank has also been implicated in Russian money-laundering scandals." Today, a House committee subpoenaed Deutsche Bank.

8/ I and the other legal commentators in @CrisLeeMaza's article do not argue that there is evidence of an actual concrete conflict. But this remarkable number of problematic ties suggests an appearance of bias... and questionable legal judgment, on top of his other major errors.

9/ But this combination of ties suggests an actual bias: Barr appears to be one who supports financial relations w/ Russia and/or whose legal & financial relationships would make him sympathetic to Russian capital and Russian contacts.
Barr has a remarkably pro-Russia portfolio.

10/ Reminder: DeutscheBank was caught in a $10B Russian money-laundering scheme and paid a massive fine in Jan. 2017, after its ties to Trump - as the only western bank that would continue to loan him money - were widely reported as questionable in 2016.

https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/1117979993936748545


The “hyperfocus” on Barr’s memo worked well for him as a smokescreen. Do we know, for example, who he was referring to when he wrote “some people are congenitally unable to accept” that long prison sentences are the only solution for “chronic offenders”?
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Attachment 12(a), page 239: Editorial, “The crackdown on corporate fraud threatens to stifle the financial system.”
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Attachment 12(a), page 204: Editorial, “FEC appears to have focused its attention on conservative groups.”
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Attachment 12(d), page 251: “If it came to my life being regulated, I would rather be regulated by ten police officers picked at random from throughout the United States.”
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Attachment 12(d), page 309: Gun control, drug treatment, and more police are of “marginal utility” toward reducing violent crime.”
Image

Lastly, Attachment 12(a), page 262: “The Federalist Society chapter at Duquesne was started when nearly 100 students were addressed...by the Honorable William Barr.”

He wrote @SenFeinstein to explain that he was never a FedSoc member, although they share a lot of history.
Image
https://twitter.com/Ex67T20/status/1084129573271425024
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 17, 2019 6:01 pm

Barr's son-in-law is now advising Trump on legal issues, including some relating to the Mueller probe. Barr's daughter is working in the Treasury, which was compromised by Russia four years ago.
-
Sarah Kendzior
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 18, 2019 9:04 am

The Life Changing Magic of Covering Up, By Attorney General William Barr
by David Litt
Does it spark joy? If not, redact it.

This simple step is the start of the DonTrumpi Method, my painstakingly developed technique for decluttering your legal life.


Out now, Issue 55 gathers work from Laura van den Berg, R. O Kwon, Alexander Chee, and T Kira Madden.
Perhaps it seems too good to be true. Maybe you, too, have recently tried to deal with a mess of federal investigations, only to find yourself alone in the Oval Office at 3 a.m. drowning leathery steak in ketchup and watching another old episode of Lou Dobbs Tonight on the DVR. Faced with such circumstances, many of my clients have reported feeling profoundly unsettling feelings. Helplessness. Shame. Even populism.

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The art of covering up is not easy. Many people lack the skills to master it. Others are held back by bad habits such as procrastination or integrity. But it is my belief that anyone who takes my course can, with the right mindset, permanently avoid accountability for their wrongdoing.

I advise my clients to begin by thoroughly eliminating clutter. Discarding intensely and completely is essential to covering up. For example, I recently found a 400-page special counsel report in my office. At first, it felt important to me. But then I realized: I did not truly love the Mueller Report. I could replace it with a four-page letter, and not only was I tidier, I was far happier as well.


The second installment of our Manifesto Series is available for preorder. Orders will ship late January, 2019. Since the 2016 election, reading the news each day can send even the most placid...
You must undertake this journey, even with the objects you find it most painful to discard. If you’re finding it particularly difficult to part with items in your custody, those following the DonTrumpi Method have found it helpful to thank them for your time together. For example, you could say: “Thank you, grand jury testimony, for providing me vital information about Russia’s attempt to undermine our democracy and how we might prevent it in the future. Because of you, I learned that I don’t actually care about that stuff.”

Here is another important rule: You must do it all at once. Some of my clients have tried decluttering their lives piece by piece. One day they fire the FBI director. The next day they attack the free press. If you try to cover up this way, you will never succeed. If, however, you cover up in one marathon session, you will be amazed by the things you find, like no collusion.

Something else I advise all my clients is to share as little as possible. When covering up, wait until you are completely finished before you allow others to see your work. For example, members of Congress can have a strong emotional attachment to the things you hope to discard, making covering up extremely stressful for them. For their sake, I always recommend my clients to avoid showing anything to oversight committees until they’re completely finished. Or, ideally, ever.

Many people think that they’re too guilty or incompetent to cover up. But the truth is anyone can do it. Here are just a few of the many testimonies I have received.

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“My name is Eliot Abrams. You helped me get a presidential pardon during the Iran-Contra scandal for lying to Congress about war crimes and then I went back to being a respected member of the foreign policy establishment for some reason and today I’m in charge of American policy in Venezuela. Seriously. Google it.”


When Sophie Swankowski surfaces from the freezing waters, she finds herself in an ancient castle in Poland—and in the center of an ages-old battle. Even with her magical powers, the strength and...
For me, there is no greater satisfaction than seeing a client tidy up their legal life and experience more fulfillment in every aspect of their being. For example, successful clients report that they are more present in the current moment. How often do we fail to appreciate the majesty of a perfect sunset or the beauty of a wholesale purge at DHS? Covering up can change all that.

What is more, covering up lets you live the life you always wanted. Clients who have gone through the DonTrumpi Method are able to cherish the things they truly love, like Stephen Miller. What is more, being hastily cleared of obstruction will also hastily clear your mind. For example, one client told me that only after disposing of the rule of law could he pour himself into his true passion: investigating James Comey.

If you have read this far, you’ve already begun the covering-up journey. You are probably thinking about all the sketchy tax dodges, fraudulent foundations, and blatant campaign-finance violations that are preventing you from engaging fully with your true mission in life.

It is time to make the change you always wanted. The DonTrumpi method has worked for me. It’s worked for dozens of my clients. And I [REDACTED] percent guarantee it will work for you.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the ... lliam-barr
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby PufPuf93 » Sat Apr 20, 2019 5:41 am

Besides having a professional relationship, Barr is a decades long personal friend of Robert Mueller. Barr and Mueller's wives are friends and bible study together.

I have never found Mueller especially comforting as he is GOP and a Bushite retained by Obama, that a likely mistake IMO. Shades of Fitzmas.

The situation appears to me that Barr and Mueller are working in tandem to muddy and take the wind out of the Trump investigation.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/ ... ds-1102244

New Trump-Russia subplot: Mueller and Barr are ‘good friends’

Trump’s attorney general nominee told senators the president knows about his 30-year relationship with the special counsel, whom Trump says is out to get him.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 01/15/2019 05:47 PM EST

The president’s pick to replace Jeff Sessions at the helm of the Justice Department has known and admired the president’s bête noire, Robert Mueller, for 30 years — and somehow President Donald Trump seems fine with that.

The relationship, which Barr described in public Tuesday during his Senate confirmation hearing, is both a source of reassurance to Democrats worried about Barr’s attitude toward Mueller’s probe and a reminder of the small size of Washington’s legal and law enforcement worlds.

Why it isn’t more troubling to Trump, who, Barr said, is aware of the relationship, remains a mystery.

Barr and Mueller first crossed paths at the Justice Department during the George H.W. Bush administration. But the relationship goes further: Their wives are close friends who attend Bible study together, and Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr’s daughters.

“They have a high level of respect for each other,” said Paul McNulty, a former senior DOJ official who led the department’s policy and communications shop while Barr was attorney general and Mueller served as the head of its Criminal Division. “They have maintained a good friendship ever since.”

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Barr praised Mueller’s “distinguished record of public service” and said the special counsel’s probe is proper and should be allowed to proceed without interference. That’s a sharp contrast to the acting attorney general Barr would replace, Matthew Whitaker, who has called Mueller’s appointment “ridiculous and “a little fishy,” among other things.

Barr said Trump knows about his friendship with Mueller, saying on Tuesday that the topic came up during a June 2017 meeting he had had with Trump at the White House to discuss the possibility that he might serve as Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia investigation.

Trump asked Barr how well he knew Mueller, and Barr said he replied that the two families “were good friends and would be good friends when this was all over and so forth, and he was interested in that.”

Barr said Trump also asked him what he thought about the special counsel’s “integrity and so forth and so on.”

“I said Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as such,” Barr said he replied, adding that he told the president he also wasn’t interested in working as his personal attorney and “never heard from him again” until the opening for the attorney general post came up again late last year.

Barr smiles during the first day of his confirmation hearings to return to lead the Justice Department on Jan. 15.

The Barr-Mueller connection is all the more striking given Trump’s repeated complaints about the special counsel’s relationship with former FBI Director James Comey. Conservatives have long cited the bond between Mueller and Comey — whose firing by Trump prompted the special counsel’s appointment — as evidence that Mueller is hopelessly conflicted. Trump has piled on in Twitter missives and media interviews, calling the two men “best friends” working in tandem to tar his presidency.

“I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other,” the president told The Daily Caller last September.

Mueller and Comey are former Justice Department colleagues, but sources close to both men, and Comey himself, have insisted the president has exaggerated their bond.

“I admire the heck out of the man, but I don’t know his phone number. I’ve never been to his house. I don’t know his children’s names,” Comey told Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) last month during a joint House hearing with the former FBI director. “I think I had a meal once alone with him in a restaurant. … We’re not friends in any social sense.”

For their part, Trump and Barr do not appear to have deep ties. While Barr donated $2,700 to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, he also gave $55,000 to a political action committee supporting Jeb Bush’s primary effort.

Barr told senators he “did not pursue this position” of attorney general under Trump, and the 68-year-old lawyer initially resisted the Republican president’s overtures to serve again as attorney general.

Congress

Key moments from William Barr's confirmation hearing

By MATTHEW CHOI

Trump has mentioned Barr only once on Twitter, on the day he announced the nomination. Nor did he hold a White House event to announce Barr’s nomination.
If confirmed, Barr would supervise Mueller’s now 20-month-old probe into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, from the special counsel’s budget to subpoenas and criminal indictments.
It won’t be the first time Barr has been Mueller’s boss.

During the George W. Bush administration, the two men often worked together on sensitive issues.

At the department’s 1991 news conference rolling out its annual budget request, for example, Barr, then deputy attorney general, was joined by Mueller, then the assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, to answer reporters’ questions about the Bush administration’s spending plans to combat white-collar crime, defense procurement fraud and child pornography.

Later that year, during Barr’s confirmation hearing to serve as Bush’s attorney general, Barr noted that he was overseeing Mueller in a wide-ranging federal investigation into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a politically connected Luxembourg-based bank that would later plead guilty to running a wide-scale money laundering scheme.

They also appeared together at a news conference announcing the indictment of two Libyan officials who were charged with bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
And just ahead of the 1992 presidential election, Barr and Mueller pushed back against House Democratic demands seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the first Bush administration’s dealings with Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. “No amount of hysterical rhetoric or political cheap shots can substitute for evidence that warrants triggering the statute,” Mueller told the congressional panel during a highly charged hearing, according to a CNN report from the time.

Legal

Trump's AG nominee pledges to allow Mueller to complete investigation

By MARIANNE LEVINE and DARREN SAMUELSOHN

Former H.W. Bush DOJ official George Terwilliger III, who sat behind Barr at Tuesday’s Senate confirmation session, told Politico in an email that the two men still share a “great mutual professional respect.

“In the sense that anytime you work extensively with professional colleagues, especially on matters of some moment, who become friends when there is such mutual respect, I would describe them as friends,” he said.

Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller aide at DOJ, said the Mueller-Barr relationship would help give the two men confidence in each other’s judgment and analysis.

But he doubted that either would make decisions based on those ties. “You just don’t see that at this level of the Justice Department,” he said.

During Barr’s hearing, senators from both parties pressed the attorney general nominee on whether he would give Mueller the funding he needs to finish his investigation and see to it that a final accounting of the special counsel’s work be made public. On both issues, Barr said yes. He also said he would reject any presidential order that he fire Mueller.

Senators on the Judiciary panel also pressed Barr for more details about the tight-lipped Mueller. Would Barr describe the special counsel as a fair-minded person, Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham asked?

“Absolutely,” Barr replied.

Graham followed up by asking Barr if he expected Mueller to be fair to Trump and the country. “Yes,” said the nominee.

Invoking one of Trump’s favorite epithets about the Russia probe, the South Carolina senator asked Barr whether he believes Mueller “would be involved in a witch hunt against anybody.”
“I don’t believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt,” he replied.
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:43 am

Image
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jul 30, 2019 1:01 pm

https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialist_/comments/cf49wj/us_attorney_general_barr_turns_sights_on_cia_and/

US Attorney General Barr Turns Sights on CIA and FBI - Washington Post and NY Times Defend Rogue Political Police - by Stephen Cohen -18 July 2019 - r/Socialist_

Also see: Attorney General William Barr gave a major speech on encryption policy
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/07/attorney_genera_1.html
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 01, 2019 10:32 am

I hope when Rep Adam Schiff or Jerry Nadler gets Bill Barr and Steve Engel under oath, they ask why OLC overclassified something embarrassing to Barr.
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:51 pm

The Minister of Justice Meets the Minister of Propaganda
Why William Barr’s meeting with Rupert Murdoch is so dangerous
Rick Wilson

Oct 11 · 5 min read

Credit: Ed Zurga/Getty Images
WWhen I read Maggie Haberman and Katie Benner’s excellent New York Times story “Trump Lashes Out at Fox News Poll as Barr Meets With Murdoch,” I knew that, unfortunately, the smoke would get more attention than the fire. Sure enough, the political class in our Twitter playground is covering Trump’s attacks on the Fox poll more than the profoundly troubling meeting of Attorney General William Barr with Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch.
I want you to imagine Republicans’ reaction if Eric Holder held secret meetings with media CEOs. They would be rabid, instant, and volcanic. There would be a damn gibbet erected on the National Mall, and rightly so.
There would be calls for his immediate removal from office. There would be a hundred baroque conspiracy theories ascribing a sinister plot of liberal subversion against the press and inappropriate pressure brought to bear on media outlets. Editorials and opinion pieces would blast him for playing politics with the office of the senior law enforcement officer of the nation.
The Attorney General — any attorney general — is supposed to be a unique player in our system, above the politics of the White House and Congress, operating without fear or favor. Yes, the AG is a presidential appointment, but by bipartisan norms for generations, he or she isn’t typically… what’s the phrase?
Oh, yes. An obvious political hack.
Like many other conservatives, I called out the moments when Eric Holder got a little too close to active engagement in politics during the Obama administration. He was, at the least, more obviously mindful of the power of his office on the political side. How ironic that seems today; Holder looks like a model of probity compared to William Barr.
So, yeah, every single conservative — and a lot of liberal — media outlets would spend 24 hours a day losing their fucking minds if a Democrat did this.
No one — liberal or conservative — should want a politically active attorney general who puts the president’s personal agenda ahead of the law and justice. The precedent is just too dark.
The monster Rupert helped create is loose upon the land, a douche ‘kaiju,’ untamed, and untamable.
Abuse of power has a kind of terrible Newtonian political physics; it doesn’t result in an equal and opposite reaction toward reform. In the political mind, it justifies that same kind of abuse when the political polarity switches to the other party. “Well, the Democratic AG so-and-so did X, and we hated it, but since he did it, we can too…”
Now let me tell you why the Barr situation is so much worse.
Because he’s meeting with Rupert Fucking Murdoch, that’s why. Rupert’s enormous ratings and massive social power over the Trump base is a two-way street, and Barr knows it.
At first, Murdoch may have believed that the network could play Trump like a violin; that they could shape the perceptions of their audience in such a way that their power was virtually limitless. After all, Rupert helped create the moment that enabled Trump’s election, and his long, long history of success in television may have fooled him into thinking that the Trump mob he monetized so successfully was under his control. Like so many monster origin stories back to the golem, the monster Rupert helped create is loose upon the land, a douche kaiju, untamed, and untamable.
Why did Barr visit Murdoch? The answer, I bet, is obvious: he was delivering a political message for the president. Barr was telling the head of the largest cable television network in the nation to get in line.
“Nice network you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.”
The Minister of Justice was bringing the Minister of Propaganda to heel, promising swift retribution unless State Television got back to covering the Dear Leader in the way he desires. More missile parades and rallies, less, you know… news.
The schisms inside Fox have been much discussed of late, with news division hosts and reporters chafing at the bellowing of Fishstick Carlson, Frau Ingraham, and Client #3 Sean Hannity. It’s been even uglier as the dayside covers the Trump/Giuliani/Ukraine scandal with more venom than varnish.
From the beginning, Bill Barr has never viewed his role as a neutral figure empowered to uphold and enforce the law, but rather as an explicit enabler of Donald Trump. He’s quite openly been a man willing to violate every conceivable norm and to serve as an overtly partisan shield against accountability. He applied for the job with a memo promising to have the most expansive view of the powers of Donald Trump, not to uphold the sacred oath of the office.
As I wrote in The Daily Beast six months ago, Bill Barr is the most dangerous man in America. He wields the enormous power of the DOJ not in pursuit of the law and justice, but as a weapon against Trump’s enemies. He knows well how to deploy the levers of the DOJ’s considerable power.
Barr’s view of the absolute and unbounded supremacy of executive power is frightening and dangerous as hell, as any actual conservative would recognize. His direct interference in the special counsel investigation was a Washington, D.C. power play that worked; he managed to pollute and destroy the impact of the Mueller Report, deliberately lying about its contents and import, dismantling ongoing investigations, and constraining Mueller’s testimony.
His personal role in attempting to create a phony Deep State conspiracy to placate Trump has even taken him all the way to Europe, where he’s personally undertaken Deep State investigations on the president’s behalf. Trump’s seeming insistence that Barr undertake these missions personally wasn’t just clownish; it was deeply inappropriate, as was Barr’s acceptance of the order to do so.
His efforts to silence cooperation of White House and administration members who have been requested to testify before Congress isn’t to protect executive privileges; it’s to defend Donald Trump’s political fortunes.
These actions, and likely many more we haven’t seen in the public view at this time, are absolutely disqualifying for an Attorney General of the United States of America.
This isn’t “Better Call Barr.” A president who honored his oath of office and our system of government would never hire someone like this. Far from being the institutionalist many claimed and hoped, Barr’s wildly expansive view of executive power appears to even supersede either his oath of office or any fears he may have about the judgment of history.
GEN
What matters now. A new Medium publication about politics, power, and culture.

https://gen.medium.com/the-minister-of- ... 04c98ba11a
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Oct 14, 2019 10:12 am

CREW Requests Investigation of Attorney General Barr
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7, 2019

CONTACT: Aaron Rodriguez
202-408-5565 | arodriguez@citizensforethics.org

CREW Requests Investigation of Attorney General Barr

Washington— The Inspector General of the Department of Justice should investigate whether Attorney General William Barr violated federal ethics laws and principles by participating in matters related to allegations in the Ukraine whistleblower complaint, according to a letter sent today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). While Attorney General Barr was directly implicated in the complaint, he does not appear to have recused from DOJ matters related to it, which likely would violate conflict of interest laws and possibly bias DOJ action on the complaint.

“Once again, we have no choice but to question whether Attorney General Barr’s loyalty lies with his responsibility to the American people, or with his political ties to the President and his own self interest,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “It should be a no brainer that an Attorney General personally implicated in a complaint should recuse from anything related to that complaint, and Barr’s apparent failure to do so severely undermines the Justice Department’s ability to enforce the law with integrity and independence.”

According to the whistleblower complaint, Attorney General Barr “appear[ed] to be involved” in President Trump’s attempt to use the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election. Additionally, in a memorandum of a call between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine, the president asked President Zelensky to investigate Vice President Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory involving the 2016 election, and repeatedly asked him discuss the investigations with Barr. The president also went as far to say, “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.” After reviewing the transcript of this call, prosecutors at DOJ declined to investigate, concluding that the president had not violated campaign finance law. DOJ has indicated that Barr did not formally recuse from the complaint, and one report indicated Barr was “minimally involved in the issue.”

“Whether or not Barr is ultimately determined to have played a role in the President’s Ukraine misconduct, his central place in the whistleblower complaint and the call memorandum makes clear that he should have no part in the Justice Department’s consideration of these issues,” said Bookbinder. “The Inspector General must immediately investigate whether Barr’s participation violated ethics laws and principles.”

Last month, CREW sent a letter to DOJ’s top ethics official, Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus, stating that Attorney General Barr must recuse himself from all DOJ investigations into the origins of the FBI counterintelligence investigation regarding the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election due to his lack of impartiality. Earlier, CREW cited Barr’s lack of impartiality in calling for his recusal from overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Click here to read the letter.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/press ... eral-barr/
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:20 am

New Evidence Hints at Another Justice Department Coverup

Attorney General William Barr speaks at vigil for law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty in Washington, DC in May. Shane T. Mccoy via ZUMA
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) released evidence on Tuesday that the Justice Department buried the whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president by failing to refer the matter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Klobuchar suggested the Justice Department violated a longstanding agreement between the agencies to share information about possible campaign finance violations for potential enforcement action.

To recap: The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the impeachment inquiry didn’t just contain evidence that the president pressured a foreign government to help him win reelection. It also contained evidence of a potential campaign finance violation. When President Trump asked for dirt on his political opponent, he likely illegally solicited a “thing of value” from a foreign national.

In August, Justice Department officials decided that rather than turn the whistleblower complaint over to Congress, department lawyers would assess the allegations against Trump, including evidence that the president had broken campaign finance law. After what news reports described as a cursory review, the department declined to launch a criminal investigation, finding that Trump had not asked for a “thing of value.” This was a stretch; campaign finance experts generally agree that opposition research damaging to an opponent, which campaigns can pay a lot of money for, is clearly valuable. The FEC also considers it a “thing of value.” Nevertheless, the department lawyers declared the matter case closed.

But under a 1978 memorandum of understanding between the department and the FEC—which, like Justice is authorized to penalize campaign finance violations—the complaint should have been passed onto the FEC even if the department declined to launch a criminal investigation, so the election watchdog can determine whether a civil penalty is called for.

Earlier this month, Klobuchar set out to uncover whether the Justice Department had honored this agreement, sending two letters to the FEC inquiring whether it had received any such referral. On October 18, the commission’s Democratic chair, Ellen Weintraub, confirmed to Klobuchar that the FEC had not been notified. “The refusal to inform the FEC and refer the matter regarding the President’s call to the FEC as required to do, as the Justice Department is required, undermines our campaign finance system and is unacceptable in a democracy,” Klobuchar said in Tuesday statement.

What’s unclear so far is why no such referral was made. Either the Justice Department dropped the ball, or Klobuchar has helped discover another avenue in the administration’s sprawling coverup.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... epartment/
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:17 am

Legal Experts Say That William Barr’s Ties to Russia Are Troubling, Warrants Recusal
Todd NeikirkApril 16, 2019
As he had already served as Attorney General, William Barr had a relatively easy confirmation experience. While there were questions about his opinions on Russia, Barr was confirmed to the position by a vote of 54-45.


WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 10: U.S. Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on April 10, 2019 in Washington, DC. Barr is appearing before the Senate committee one day after testifying to the House where he faced many questions about the Mueller report.
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Barr had spent the last 10 years working in the private sector. During that time, he had associations with Russia-based Alfa Bank and The Vector Group, another Russian company. Some legal experts claim that Barr should recuse himself from the Mueller investigation because of these ties.

Jed Shugerman, from Fordham’s School of Law, explains, “The legal standard is really clear about these issues. It’s not about actual conflict, it’s about the appearance of a conflict, about the appearance of bias. The problem is that we have so many flagrant conflicts that are so obvious, we get distracted from what the legal standard is.”

Michael Frisch, from Georgetown’s Law School feels that these ties should be looked into. “All of this raises the need for further inquiry from an independent review, not a Department of Justice investigation,” Frish told Newsweek. “He’s not doing anything illegal. [But] is it good practice, given that he might have been involved with these entities in private practice? Probably not.”

In his role of Attorney General, Barr has been accused of shielding Donald Trump from the Mueller Report fallout. With the Senate under Republican control, it is unlikely that Barr would be put under any kind of investigation, especially one looking into his Russian ties.

The Department of Justice has not replied to any queries on this matter.
https://hillreporter.com/legal-experts- ... usal-31359
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 25, 2019 1:34 pm

Mark Warner

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Mark Warner Retweeted The New York Times
Senate Intel is wrapping up a three-year bipartisan investigation, and we've found nothing remotely justifying this.

Mr. Barr's "investigation" has already jeopardized key international intelligence partnerships.

He needs to come before Congress and explain himself.
https://twitter.com/MarkWarner/status/1 ... 7841212417
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Re: Attorney General William Barr

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 26, 2019 12:08 pm

Is William Barr the Head of DOJ or QAnon?
News that John Durham is investigating the Russia probe as a criminal matter is further evidence that the Justice Department is just a tool for Trump now
Rick Wilson

Oct 26 · 5 min read

I warned you William Barr was the most dangerous man in America.
I warned you he would burn Washington to the ground.
I warned you Barr would shatter the Justice Department into a million fragments.
I warned you Barr would run roughshod over the law, mangle the Constitution, shred the separation of powers, and turn the federal government into a weapon to destroy anyone Donald Trump designates as an enemy. From the moment he manipulated and distorted the findings of the Mueller Report to protect Trump, it was clear that Barr is a living, breathing abuse of power.
As opposed to the projected imaginings of Trump’s hated phantoms of the Deep State, Barr really is at the heart of a government conspiracy to destroy any constraints on the power of the executive branch and to eliminate any accountability for the president of the United States.
For the attorney general to personally travel to the U.K. and Italy to investigate Mueller’s Russia probe, and for the president’s minions to be dispatched to Ukraine and elsewhere stalking these Deep State phantoms, was silly enough. That Barr and others came up empty — as one knew they most certainly would — is an embarrassment, but in an administration without shame or boundaries, the solution to failure is to double down.
At Trump’s personal direction, the Barr “Justice” Department has empowered U.S. Attorney John Durham, a prosecutor of a former reputation for seriousness, to run point on an investigation into the origins of the FBI’s own probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This week, we learned that probe now treats the investigation as a criminal matter. Trump seeks not only to destroy the people who tried to reveal the truth about Russia and 2016, but to also intimidate anyone else who dares to tell the truth about his rampant, ongoing regime of corruption and malfeasance. Barr is his weapon, his tool, his agent of vengeance.
That the MAGA and QAnon crowds see Durham as an avenging angel, a death-dealing wild dog here to maul and devour the Deep State is both laughable and horrifying. Their fantasies of roundups, mass arrests, secret indictments, and one-way tickets to GITMO for anyone connected to the operations to identify and neutralize Russian election interference are a common element of their wishcasting. They’re convinced Durham will open the floodgates and bust open a conspiracy that doesn’t exist.
The idea that the DOJ’s FISA warrants will prove a conspiracy against Trump fails to meet the laugh test. Barr has access to all of this information, and if any of it would clear Trump’s name or damage his targets, Barr would have leaked it or launched the DOJ’s resources on something other than a long-range, multi-year Durham investigatory slog.
They want charges of treason. They want Comey, Strozk, Page, Brennan, Clapper, and others arrested. They want a criminal probe of the Mueller effort, despite their contradictory assertion that the Mueller Report exonerated him.
The Trump folks built a baroque conspiracy in their minds that involves a Deep State with powers well beyond what actually exists.
It’s vital to their narrative that sinister forces have had it in for Trump since the beginning. These Deep Staters are — in the best tradition of all authoritarian propaganda — forces that are both all-powerful and purely malevolent. Whether it’s liberal academia, the mainstream media, Islamists, gays, globalists, or Never Trump Human Scum, the agitprop always casts these forces as having powers beyond human understanding.
As the Trump administration feeds its conspiracy-addled base, Barr’s DOJ dribble out a steady stream of alleged discoveries and hypothetical cases to try to assemble a storyline that runs right back to the ultimate superpowered bad guy in their pantheon: the Kenyan Muslim Socialist Sharia Sleeper Agent, Barack Obama. They’re already pushing the emergent theme of “What did Obama know, and when did he know it” — despite the ludicrous nature of the claim.
There was only one 2016 conspiracy, and that was the one Russia waged to elect Trump.
That it’s all fake doesn’t matter. Clicks and tweets are all that counts in the president’s domain. That’s why Barr’s political commissars at the DOJ will feed the breathless coverage of Durham. That’s why the descriptions of the “conspiracy” will grow more fevered and more exaggerated, and why Fox will fill the airwaves with ever-more operatic claims of a plot against Trump.
But they’re hunting for nothing.
The real government — including the intelligence services — doesn’t work that way. There is no unified secret state, no Intel Community Illuminati secretly pulling strings. The origin story of the investigation into Russia didn’t emerge in a smoke-filled room, but bubbled up from reports of shady Russian connections. There was only one 2016 conspiracy, and that was the one Russia waged to elect Trump.
Even Barr’s DOJ won’t deliver a conspiracy big enough to satisfy the Trump crowd. Did Lisa Page and Peter Strzok send some text messages that weren’t professional? Sure. But that’s hardly going to rise to the level where a show trial drags the alleged bad guys before the bar of Justice.
The final element of this crisis is the increasing legal dissonance. Barr is playing antagonist to the so-called Deep State while ignoring and bypassing the actual crimes being committed by the president, and the president’s minions, staffers, allies, and outside legal counsel. His total disinterest in requiring the White House to follow the law, his selective persecution — yes, I used that word advisedly — of Trump’s enemies and his refusal to uphold his oath is stunning.
Barr is openly coordinating an illegal and dangerous effort in support of the president’s private legal defense and political defense efforts. He is weaponizing the DOJ to target Trump’s political opponents. Barr will investigate the investigators until he either breaks them or intimidates them into submission.
Barr has chosen to be Trump’s enforcer, buffer, and legal gymnast. And for that, he poses a risk not only to the DOJ, but to the Republic itself.


https://gen.medium.com/is-william-barr- ... 8d68fc3a31
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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