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This week saw the unveiling of the Trump administration’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, and it wasn’t nice.
A jury deliberated for just six hours before reaching a unanimous verdict acquitting former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, leaving Barr’s special prosecutor John Durham with virtually nothing to show for his attempt. years of finding crimes by the FBI and Clinton. campaign in the Trump-Russia investigation.
Hours after the jury dismissed the Durham bubble, BuzzFeed released a previously secret report from the Justice Department, also ordered by Barr, in which Barr’s own DOJ concluded that the Obama administration did not intend to to expose the identity of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, “for political reasons.” purposes or other inappropriate reasons ”. It was one more proof than another favorite Barr-triggered Trump statement that Obama officials were “unmasking” illegally, it was a stretcher.
The day after these twin rejections of Barr’s fantasies, the deception was told on Fox News, arguing that Durham’s failure at court was in fact a triumph. “While he didn’t get a DC jury conviction,” Barr said, “I think he got something much more important.”
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That’s as convincing as the Washington Nationals say, “Even though we haven’t been able to score a career in 27 innings, we think we’ve got something much more important.” In a courtroom, a prosecutor wins or loses.
So what did Barr think was more important than Durham really winning his case? “It crystallized the central role played by Hillary’s campaign by throwing, like a dirty trick, the whole narrative of the Russiagate collusion,” Barr said, “and exposed a really terrible behavior on the part of the supervisors. of the FBI. “
Durham did not “crystallize” or “expose” anything. He filled his court records with innuendos and the jury decided he had not filed his case. The only conviction Durham has won so far was a deal with an FBI attorney for a fake email, and this misconduct was discovered by the Department of Justice inspector general, not Durham.
But Barr’s argument, that spreading Durham’s insinuation is “far more important” than proof of actual misconduct, unmasks Barr’s perverted view of justice. He did not touch Durham (or John Bash, who handled the masking investigation) primarily to prosecute criminal behavior. He launched the investigations to tell a political “story.”
“Part of this operation is trying to find out the real story,” Barr told Fox News. “And I’ve said from the beginning, you know, if we can get convictions, if they’re achievable, John Durham will get them. But the other side of that is getting the story out.” Filing a case for this purpose violates the policy of the Department of Justice.
Leading Trump’s DOJ, Barr was about telling stories rather than pursuing illicit acts. He sat down on Mueller’s report of Russia’s original investigation, rather than releasing his own summary which gave a misleading impression of Mueller’s findings. Barr claimed without hesitation: “I think there was espionage” against the Trump campaign, but no evidence has emerged.
In fulfilling Donald Trump’s demands to investigate Russian investigators and those who allegedly “unmasked” Flynn, Barr did not seek justice. He now admits that trying to argue that the FBI acted in bad faith against Trump, as Republicans allege, would have been “onerous” and “a Herculean case” and a “very difficult thing to prove.”
Barr was covering for Justice and the reckless accusations made by Trump and his allies. Barr made sure the lies had a big advantage in leaving lasting impressions before any corrective could be issued.
Barr left room for Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) To predict “one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history”; that Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) proclaimed a scandal “bigger than Watergate”; that Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claimed that a “smoking weapon” had been found; that MP Michael Turner (R-Ohio) declare “a threat to democracy itself”; and that Deputy Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) alleged that Obama officials “were unmasking everyone and everyone so that they could leak information to a press that was willing to take that information illegally.”
We now know that Trump’s DOJ, in his own words, “found no evidence” of inappropriate unmasking. And we see that Durham’s assertion of wrongdoing in Russia’s investigation ends with a speedy acquittal.
Barr, unmasked, now claims that federal jurors in the failed Durham case violated their oaths following political prejudice. “A DC jury,” he said, “is a very favorable jury for anyone called Clinton and the Clinton campaign. These are the facts of life.… There are two standards of law, and we have had to fight it. “
So now Barr is trying to discredit the centennial American jury system. It’s just one more “story” that tells to replace the rule of law with the reign of insinuation.