Trump AG nominee, William Barr seems to be unfamiliar with important sections of the US constitution, for example, the 14th amendment.
or the emoluments clause, another constitutional issue that has been widely discussed in political circles for a couple of years now.
“I think there is a dispute as to what the emoluments clause relates to,” Barr told the Senate while maintaining that he’s never researched the subject. “I couldn’t even tell you what it says.” — www.vox.com/...
But you see, William Barr lives under a rock and doesn’t really know what’s happening in the world. Someone might have to tap on the rock and let him know that the inspector general of the GSA has foudn Trump’s lease on his DC hotel violates the emoluments clause.
Barr’s self-confessed cluelessness should lead us to question why Trump is appointing a self-professed Mr. Magoo to the post of AG. One reason might be Barr’s detailed memo questioning the Mueller investigation to Trump’s attorneys. Another possibility is his statements suggesting the DOJ undertake further investigations against Hillary Clinton. Arguments against the special counsel’s investigation and Hillary Clinton are table stakes in interviews for cabinet posts under Trump.
Barr also has another, more meaningful qualifications. He’s known to have supported pardons for a prior generation of Republican traitors, those involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. As George H.W. Bush’s AG he supported pardons for politically connected criminals, under suspiciously similar circumstances. Several of these Republican criminals should be considered traitors, but Barr’s DoJ supported their pardons even though an average person might see them as an incentive to avoid implicating Bush himself in the Iran-Contra crimes.
Barr is also no stranger to helping presidents shield themselves from federal inquiries. In 1992, he supported President George H. W. Bush’s decision to pardon six people for crimes, including obstruction of justice, in the Iran-Contra investigation, which looked into whether the Reagan administration, in which Bush had served as vice president, illegally traded arms with Iran to fund right-wing paramilitaries in Central America.
One of Bush’s justifications for the pardons was that the “common denominator of their motivation—whether their actions were right or wrong—was patriotism.” That is an odious rationale—patriotism as a blanket excuse for lawbreaking would condone any number of atrocities. It is hardly a stretch to imagine Trump using the same rationale to pardon loyalists for refusing to cooperate with Mueller. Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said the pardons demonstrated “that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.” The pardons were not merely rewards for “patriotism,” as the president insisted, Walsh said, but an attempt to prevent the investigation from implicating Bush himself.
Barr was asked during his confirmation hearing Tuesday whether a president could “lawfully issue a pardon in exchange for the recipient’s promise to not incriminate him.” Barr said that would “be a crime.” But the exact phrasing leaves open the possibility that Trump could abuse his pardon power to prevent associates from testifying against him—as long as no explicit promise was made. The template for that approach would be the Iran-Contra pardons that Barr himself supported. —
www.theatlantic.com/...
Thankfully, te press is picking up on this, NPR ran a story earlier today titled: William Barr Supported Pardons In An Earlier D.C. 'Witch Hunt': Iran-Contra
Let’s hope that senators refuse to confirm this odious nominee, after all, there are so many reasons to do so.
On that last one, as Bush’s AG he literally wrote a paper titled The Case for More Incarceration. Yes, more incarceration, except for good old boys committing crimes who are closely connected to the Republican president.
But we should be clear-eyed, it’s a slim hope, since very senior Republican Senators voting on the confirmation seem to be largely clueless about the legal limits on the powers of the presidency.
— @subirgrewal