Impeachment Day 32: Atty Gen Barr Seeks to Calm the Mad King
The Department of Justice has opened a criminal inquiry into the origins of the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election. DOJ prosecutor John H. Durham will now have the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.
There is widespread concern about Attorney General William Barr’s intentions, given the ongoing insistence by the President about a deep state plot against himself and the erosion of norms throughout the entire federal bureaucracy.
Officials at the seventeen intelligence agencies involved in concluding there was Russian interference in the 2016 elections now need to worry about show trials of their investigators. Some have already retained counsel.
The New York Times reports that FBI agents are being questioned about anti-Trump bias. Inquiries about a conspiracy by the CIA leadership to “trick” the FBI into opening the Russia investigation. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the former director of the National Security Agency, declined comment when asked whether he had spoken with investigators.
It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Mr. Trump is certain to see the criminal investigation as a vindication of the years he and his allies have spent trying to discredit the Russia investigation. In May, Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity that the F.B.I. officials who opened the case — a counterintelligence investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Moscow’s election sabotage — had committed treason.
“We can never allow these treasonous acts to happen to another president,” Mr. Trump said. He has called the F.B.I. investigation one of the biggest political scandals in United States history.
There are two schools of thought about just how seriously we should take this latest news.
Everybody agrees that the timing of the leak concerning the escalation of the DOJ’s inquiry was influenced by a torrent of bad news for the administration and the likelihood of more damning testimony in the House of Representatives.
Tim Morrison, a top National Security Council adviser, is expected--according to CNN-- to confirm key aspects of Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr.’s explosive testimony that Trump withheld military aid to leverage Ukraine into launching sham investigations undercutting 2016 Russian interference and smearing potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden.
A move by chief apologist Lindsay Graham to pass a resolution condemning the House investigation had to be watered down before many Senators would even look at it. Rumor has it that as many as 10 GOP Senators are reconsidering their fealty to Trump. (It would take 20 GOP votes for a conviction to pass)
Some observers, like Charles P. Pierce at Esquire are expecting the worst:
... Barr is on active duty, spanning the globe to find corroboration of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago's most dearly held conspiracy theories. (Italy told him to get stuffed.) And anyone who expected Barr to behave differently than he has—sabotaging the release of the Mueller Report and, now, concocting a cover story out of pure paranoid moonshine—should not be allowed to carry their own money or cut their own meat….
But the perils in this latest twist are profound. It's become plain this week that the political defense of an indefensible presidency* is going to wreak havoc all through the government. We have had the Juicebox Meatheads crashing a closed committee hearing. We have had Senator Lindsey Graham, that reliable White House castrato, proposing a meaningless Senate resolution condemning the House investigation, and now this latest abomination. We already have branches of government at war with each other and, to be honest, that was sort of the idea behind the Constitution's structure in the first place.
But it's also clear now that the Republican Senate is going to war with the Democratic House. It also become clear that the internecine war in the House is going to be savage and bloody. This new investigation exists only to provide the Republican side of all those conflicts with a weapon that can be deployed at any time. This administration* is willing to burn everything down rather than surrender its power. This president* is willing to bring all the temples down on his own head. I don't think anybody really understands how terrible the coming reckoning will be.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, while acknowledging the potential for a nefarious outcome --given Barr’s attitude about there not being any limits on executive power-- says this may be overblown:
So one cannot rule out Barr potentially carrying out Trump’s directive to prosecute his political opponents — the “deep state” denizens Trump baselessly claims tried to derail his candidacy. Indeed, the Times bluntly notes that this news will “raise alarms” that Trump “is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.”
However, it is at least possible that this development isn’t quite as serious as it seems — and that this might be yet another effort to calm the Audience of One, the Mad King who is raging at everyone for not shielding him from the impeachment inquiry closing in all around him.
As Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez notes, this signals the possibility that the criminal matter could be something relatively less serious — say, an examination of early leaks out of the Russia probe. Putting this out now, Sanchez notes, helps overshadow the impeachment inquiry’s fusillade of devastating revelations, by creating the impression that the “Deep State coup is about to come crashing down."
Who do you think frantically wants to create that impression? The Mad King does.
The Attorney General isn’t loyal to Trump because he likes the man. Barr, like many evangelicals sees the President as a (flawed) means to an end, namely the imposition of a theocratic state.
Here’s Bradley Onishi, explaining what’s going on via Rewire News:
This is why so many evangelical leaders equated impeaching the president with an act of war. Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, and Rick Wiles all stated that impeachment could lead to civil war.
It’s also why recent remarks by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr are so telling.
“This is not decay,” Barr said in his remarks at Notre Dame Law School. “This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.”
His remarks are drawn straight from dominionist theology, which sees the world as belonging to God and his people. The goal of a dominionist is not diversity, or dialogue, or healthy debate. It is a will-to-power ideology based on vanquishing God’s enemies.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the investigation into Trump’s personal attorney now includes blowing the door off a safe. Via CNN:
Federal prosecutors in New York have subpoenaed the brother of one of the recently indicted associates of Rudy Giuliani, according to two people familiar with the matter, as they escalate their investigation in the campaign-finance case.
The subpoena to Steven Fruman is the latest indication of prosecutors' actions since the rushed arrest two weeks ago of his brother, Igor Fruman, and another defendant, Lev Parnas, at a Washington-area airport. Since then, investigators have doled out multiple subpoenas and conducted several property searches, in one case blowing the door off a safe to access the contents, sources tell CNN.
Federal prosecutors told a judge this week that they are sifting through data from more than 50 bank accounts. In addition, they've put a filter team in place as they examine communications obtained via search warrant and subpoena, sensitive to material that could be subject to attorney-client privilege because Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, counted Parnas as a client. A filter team is a separate set of prosecutors who are assigned to examine evidence and set aside material that is privileged.
For the moment, anyway, the President hasn’t thrown Giuliani under the bus.
President Donald Trump on Friday offered a strange defense of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who is facing potential legal jeopardy for his work in helping the president push the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents.
While taking questions from reporters about a reported criminal investigation being opened up against his personal attorney, Trump praised Giuliani for his past work as a prosecutor.
“Rudy is a great gentleman, he’s a great crime fighter,” the president said. “He looks for corruption wherever he goes!”
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Some lighter news.
Let’s hope for the Washington Nationals (currently ahead of Houston with two wins) to sweep the World Series in four games. President Trump has announced plans to attend Game 5 on Sunday.
BUT, if he does attend, he won’t be throwing out the first pitch.
That honor will go to Trump nemesis Chef José Andrés, Michelin-starred chef who offered free meals to furloughed workers during the government shutdown, fed millions of meals to Puerto Ricans after Maria, and backed out of a deal to open a restaurant in a Trump property following his remarks about immigrants.
***
Remember THIS Scandal?
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1187742193982803968?s=20
**Daily coverage of the impeachment saga will continue through the weekend if there are new developments. And I assume there will be.**
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Lead Photo credit: Meshae Studios / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)