We begin today’s roundup with Jamelle Bouie on Bill Barr’s performance as the president’s attorney:
Whether out of sycophantic loyalty or a deep-seated belief in executive impunity, Barr has used his position to insulate the president from legal scrutiny. He has done everything in his power to downplay the impact of the special counsel’s investigation. [...] Barr has done nothing but run interference for Trump, indifferent to his established pattern of lawbreaking and criminality.
Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post says it’s time for the American people to hear from Robert Mueller directly:
It’s Mueller time.
We need public, no-holds-barred testimony before Congress by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and we need it now. As we saw Wednesday, trying to get the truth out of Attorney General William P. Barr is like squeezing blood from a stone.
At The Week, Ryan Cooper explains that Barr has always been a “cover up specialist”:
...Barr's defense of Trump comports perfectly with his previous career. Cover-ups are just what he does best — and he's probably just getting started. [...]
When he was attorney general for George H.W. Bush, he advised the president in the final days of his administration to pardon six peoplewho were neck-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal. The Reagan administration had illegally funneled money to right-wing Contra death squads in Nicaragua by secretly selling arms to Iran, and Bush himself was widely expected to be implicated in the upcoming trial of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who was pardoned and thus never went on trial). The whole investigation was effectively stymied. Prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh said at the time: "the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."
Former federal prosecutor and USA Today contributor Michael J. Stern explains how Barr’s loyalty to Trump doesn’t mean that others at the DOJ aren’t loyal to the law:
Before retiring this week, [a friend, Tom Brandon] had criticized President Donald Trump's budget cuts and testified in support of a bill, opposed by the White House, that would give the FBI more time to perform gun background checks. In an administration of Trump “yes men," it is reassuring to know there are still some people at DOJ who will do the right thing, no matter the cost. Tom Brandon is not alone. [...]
There might be no saving the ship when the captain plots a course into the iceberg. Even so, we must be careful not to attribute the attorney general’s lack of moral compass to the federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors who work in the trenches. They carry the burden of bringing justice to the murder, terrorism, child pornography and public corruption cases that cross their desks every day.
If the Justice Department is to survive its current occupation, it will be thanks to its rank-and-file agents and prosecutors. Their dedication remains unchanged. In a time when the word “unprecedented” has become commonplace, there is comfort in knowing some things stay the same.
Nick Akerman, an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, explains one aspect of the Mueller report in the context of Watergate:
...Mr. Mueller and his team faced a much more difficult task than the one that confronted Watergate investigators. In a footnote of the report (Volume I, Page 176), Mr. Mueller reveals that his office “considered, but ruled out,” bringing charges against American citizens who conspired with the Russian hackers “on the theory that the post-hacking sharing and dissemination of emails could constitute trafficking in or receipt of stolen property.”
Why wasn’t that theory pursued? Because it didn’t involve the kind of physical evidence as in Watergate, but rather cyberevidence. The relevant criminal statute that covers the theory Mr. Mueller “considered, but ruled out” is the National Stolen Property Act, and it applies only to “tangible” property (i.e., “goods, wares, or merchandise”), and does not include “intangible” property like computer data that exists “only in electronic form” and resides in cyberspace. This may sound like a bothersome legal technicality, but it is also the current state of the law, and the fact that the American statute is obsolete meant that Mr. Mueller felt his hands were tied by the nonphysical nature of his evidence.
At Time, Kathleen Hall Jamieson details how the Mueller report contained some key lessons for the press:
Across the country, newsrooms should consider the possibility posited by the New York Times’ Amy Chozick that hurried and largely uncritical coverage of stolen Democratic missives may have made journalists, as Amy Chozick writes in Chasing Hillary, “puppets in Putin’s shadowy campaign.” There’s been little public evidence of the kinds of introspection that would suggest that, confronted with a similar situation in 2020, the press would respond differently.
On a final note, speaking of the press, U.S. Reps. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), co-chairs of the Congressional Freedom of the Press Caucus, write about the vital importance of the press in our democracy:
On May 3, we mark World Press Freedom Day, an occasion to consider the indispensable role journalists play in a democratic society and to call attention to the hundreds of journalists around the world who are in prison cells, or have been attacked, injured or murdered, for the “crime” of reporting. The Congressional Freedom of the Press Caucus was founded in 2006 to serve as a voice for the safety and rights of journalists around the world, to make clear that Congress stands with them and to hold the powerful to account.