Why Bill Barr shares responsibility for Trump’s election lies

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William Barr began his tenure as Donald Trump’s attorney general with extremely elusive testimony during his confirmation hearing. He is perhaps best remembered for giving a very misleading summary of the Mueller report, and he spent much of 2020 trying to justify Trump’s conspiracy theories about the rigged election against him.

But now, more than six months after leaving government, Barr is trying to limit the damage to the image.

In interviews with reporter Jonathan Karl for a book retrieved in the Atlantic, Barr explains how his final break with Trump ultimately came after he made public claims undermining Trump’s ultimate efforts to undo his electoral defeat against Joe Biden.

To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election, Barr told an Associated Press reporter on Dec. 1.

Barr told Karl that comment prompted an angry Trump to summon him to a meeting where the president got rid of him, saying things like how the hell can you do that to me? and you must hate Trump.

Barr says not only was he not intimidated by Trump’s outburst, but he fought back, likening the Rudy Giuliani-led effort to reverse the results to a circus.

You know, you only have five weeks, Mr. President, after an election to challenge justice, Barr told Trump, according to Karl. It would have taken a crackerjack team with a really consistent and disciplined strategy. Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer comes close. It’s just a joke. This is why you are where you are.

Barr ended up leaving the Justice Department days before the Jan.6 uprising. The new account of the weeks leading up to his resignation has led some to describe him as a patriot. But that goes way too far, even when Barrs’ account is read in the most charitable manner.

Barr was eager to spread Trump’s electoral conspiracy theories until the bitter end

While Karls’ portrayal of Barr is not flattering, the excerpt from the book does not explain how Barr spent the run-up to the 2020 election serving more as a weapon of the Trump campaign than an independent arbiter of the rule of law. Barr was happy to amplify Trump’s lies about mail-in voting and voter fraud to the point where it was clear to all but the most fanatic Trump supporters that he had lost the election.

Consider, for example, the disastrous interview Barr did with Anderson Cooper on CNN on September 2, when he could not produce any evidence of mail-in vote fraud and decided that his general existence was a matter of logic. . Or his decision by the DOJ weeks later to issue a factually incorrect press release announcing an investigation into alleged postal voting irregularities in Pennsylvania, an announcement that violated DOJ policies. Ou Barrs proposes three days after the election to allow investigations into substantial allegations of voting and counting irregularities, even if there was no evidence of such irregularities.

In his interviews with Karl, Barr described his decision to allow fraud investigations despite a lack of evidence as a strategy he used to ensure he would be able to tell Trump that his conspiracy theories were baseless when the time comes.

My attitude was this: It was time to edit or close, Barr told Karl. If there was any evidence of fraud, I had no reason to suppress it. But my suspicion all along was that there was nothing there. It was bullshit.

This may seem reasonable enough at first glance. But as Greg Sargent pointed out for the Washington Post, it is not right for the DOJ, which is supposed to operate with a minimum of independence from the executive, to pursue investigations based on conspiracy theories. bullshit privileged by the president. But Barr has spent years transforming the DOJ into something akin to the president’s personal law firm.

Barrs’ comments on allowing electoral fraud investigations aren’t the only thing he tries to whitewash in his talks with Karl. He also explains his declaration of resignation as a bet to calm political tensions. (Barr wrote of Trump: Your record is all the more historic the more you have accomplished in the face of relentless and relentless resistance, adding that the president had faced a partisan attack on you in which no tactics, too. abusive and deceptive, was off limits.)

To defuse the tension, Barr had written an effusive resignation letter, which he handed to the president when he arrived at the Oval Office, Karl wrote.

But, as Jonathan Chait notes for New York magazine, if Barr had decided that Trump was dangerous and undemocratic and his comments to Karl suggest he had already come to that conclusion weeks earlier, then why would he continue to assert publicly that the real danger was Trump’s opponents?

Barr and Mitch McConnell appear to be cynical political operators

It is not even clear to what extent the rift between Barrs and Trump was motivated by the desire to protect American democracy. Instead, the Karls article gives the impression that Barr and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were primarily interested in helping Republicans win a special election in January for two seats in the US Senate.

Karl writes that McConnell urged Barr throughout November to speak out against Trump’s electoral fraud conspiracy theories because those theories complicated the argument Republicans wanted to make about the importance of maintaining a Senate majority to control the power of Bidens. But McConnell was reluctant to speak out for fear that if he did, an embittered Trump would sabotage the Republican candidates.

From Karl’s story:

Look, we need the president in Georgia, McConnell told Barr, so we can’t attack him head-on right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are truly the only one who can do it.

I understand that, Barr said. And I will do it at the appropriate time.

On another call, McConnell again begged Barr to come out and cut down on the rumors of widespread fraud.

Bill, I’m looking around, and you’re the only person who can do it, McConnell told him.

So while it is good that Barr ultimately stood up to Trump, it should be borne in mind how abnormal it is for the US Attorney General to plot with the Senate Leader on how to ensure that their political party retains power.

Of course, by the end of the Trump administration, this kind of norm-breaking behavior had become commonplace, and Barr worked as hard as anyone to pervert the DOJ into an arm of the President’s re-election campaign. It wasn’t until it became clear that Trump had lost that he thought twice. Even then, he seems to have been motivated more by cynical political concerns than he was by doing good through American democracy.

Despite Barrs’ dedication to him and the key work he did to push back the Mueller investigation, Trump predictably responded to the Atlantic story with a statement attacking Barr as RINO and disappointment in all. the meanings of the term. As always, nothing less than complete and unwavering loyalty is not enough for Trump.

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