On Tuesday evening, the nation learned that Attorney General William Barr had not just failed to report, but had actively hidden conversations and letters that he had exchanged with special counsel Robert Mueller. These exchanges, which took place after Barr authored his three- page “summary” of Mueller’s report and declared Trump not guilty of obstruction, and before Barr appeared to testify before the House, make it clear that the special counsel thought Barr was fundamentally misrepresenting both the nature and the findings of the special counsel’s report. The results of Barr’s actions, said Mueller, were “public confusion” that threatened to “undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
But Barr’s actions were not accidental or incidental. Undermining the special counsel, the results of the investigation, and public confidence in those results was exactly Barr’s intention. Barr created a false narrative in which the special counsel found nothing to suggest “collusion” and evidence so vague on the topic of obstruction that Barr could wave it away with an overnight decision. Barr then allowed that version of the “truth” to stand for three weeks, while Trump basked in the glow of “total exoneration,” Trump supporters cheered, and congressional Republicans got behind the position of “Let’s move on, there’s nothing more to see here.”
In spreading this narrative, Barr wasn’t creating “a distorted view.” He was not passing on “an inaccurate refrain.” He was engaged in an elaborate, prefabricated lie—an extension of the obstruction that appeared in the special counsel’s report. Barr then continued his obstruction, his cover-up of the cover-up, in congressional testimony, where he stated that he had not personally spoken with the special counsel and was not aware of Mueller’s attitude toward the summary that he had issued. Both of those statements were absolute, cut-and-dried, perfectly clear lies. They were lies. And they were lies issued in the service of forwarding a criminal scheme.
There is no answer to this but that William Barr should resign. And if he does not offer that resignation immediately, the Congress should rapidly move to begin his impeachment.
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The role of the attorney general is supposed to be unique. Even though it is located within the executive branch, it is also treated as the chief law enforcement official for the nation. Everything, from the results of investigations by the FBI, to criminal referrals from Congress, to reports from special counsels, flows, by law, through this position.
Yes, as Barr has pointed out repeatedly, the attorney general reports to the president. But the attorney general is not, and cannot be, the president’s personal lawyer. It is not Barr’s role to defend Donald Trump, to tailor public perception to support Trump, or to limit the actions of the Department of Justice to protect Trump. It is certainly not the role of the attorney general to lie to the public, and to Congress, in order to soften the impact of a report showing that Trump engaged in multiple instances of obstruction.
When Mueller authored a letter saying that the report by special counsel Robert Mueller had reached no conclusion on obstruction, and had left it to Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to reach the overnight conclusion that Trump had not engaged in obstruction, he was lying. The actual report makes it clear that Trump would have been found guilty but for the special circumstances the DOJ places around the executive, and because, as someone who reported through that executive branch, Mueller didn’t think he, or anyone else at the DOJ, was positioned to make that decision. Instead, the special counsel specifically invoked the power of Congress to evaluate the evidence.
Barr didn’t just lie in saying that Trump had not committed obstruction; he lied by pretending that the point of the document was to reach a “prosecutorial conclusion.” Over and over, Barr has repeated the catechism of “That’s what prosecutors do” to make it appear that there could be no answer in Mueller’s report other than guilty or not guilty. But that statement is a fundamental misrepresentation of the nature of the report, and it does a fundamental disservice to the nation. Mueller brought forward the evidence on which Congress could act. It was Barr who created the pretense that it was supposed to end with a yes-or-no decision.
Barr lied about the nature of the report. He lied about the findings of the report. He lied about his conversations and correspondence with Mueller. And he told all those lies not just to the public, not just before the press, but to the Congress.
Both his actions and his testimony have caused harm to the nation and deep, lasting damage to the role of the attorney general and the integrity of the Department of Justice. He can’t be gone soon enough.