William Barr

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      Barr couldn't pass Trump's loyalty test: shredding the US constitution | David Smith's sketch

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      If Dick Cheney gained notoriety as George W Bush’s “Darth Vader”, William Barr, the US attorney general, appeared a worthy successor as Donald Trump’s Lord of the Sith.
      Barr played the role of presidential enforcer with apparent relish, whether spinning the Russia investigation in Trump’s favour or defending a harsh crackdown on this summer’s civil unrest.
      But even he could not or would not pass the ultimate loyalty test: shredding the US constitution to help his boss steal an election. As Trump’s niece, Mary, puts in the title of her book, it was a case of Too Much and Never Enough.
      Trump tweeted on Monday that Barr will resign before Christmas. Barr, for his part, issued a resignation letter that noted election fraud allegations “will continue to be pursued” before going on to lavish praise on Trump’s “historic” record despite resistance that included “frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.
      David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for Barack Obama, observed in a Twitter post: “In writing his fawning exit letter, Barr reflected a fundamental understanding of @realDonaldTrump: Like a dog, if you scratch his belly, he is a lot more docile. Just as[k] Kim [Jong-un] !”
      But the sycophantic words could not conceal how Barr, like the attorney general Jeff Sessions and the FBI director James Comey before him, had refused to do the 45th president’s bidding once too often. With democracy in existential danger, he was the dog that did not bark.
      Barr, who previously served as attorney general under George HW Bush in the early 1990s, had always been a believer in expansive presidential power and being tough on crime. He was therefore “simpatico” – to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favourite words – with Trump from the off.
      Weeks after his Senate confirmation, Barr cleared the president of obstruction of justice even though Robert Mueller’s report would identity 10 credible allegations (for which Trump may yet face prosecution after leaving office). Barr’s pre-emptive summary of the special counsel’s report more than accentuated the positive.
      Barr did much else to emulate Roy Cohn, the bullying lawyer and Trump mentor. Appearing before Congress, he haughtily defended the aggressive law enforcement response to protests in Portland and other cities. He intervened in the cases of Trump allies such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and railed against coronavirus lockdowns. He acted more like the president’s personal attorney than the attorney general. More

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      William Barr steps down as Trump's attorney general

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      The US attorney general, William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, has resigned just weeks after he contradicted the president by saying the justice department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.Barr’s departure ends a tenure marked by brazen displays of fealty to a president whose political agenda he willingly advanced. Critics said Barr had turned the Department of Justice (DoJ) into an obedient servant of the White House, eroding its commitment to independence and the rule of law.Trump sought to play down tensions as he announced Barr’s resignation in a tweet on Monday, moments after members of the electoral college officially pushed Joe Biden over the 270-vote threshold to win the White House on Monday. The procedural step effectively ends Trump’s unprecedented bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election based on false claims of widespread voter fraud that Barr concluded were meritless.“Just had a very nice meeting with attorney general Bill Barr at the White House,” the president said. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…”In his resignation letter, released by Trump on Twitter, Barr was characteristically effusive of the president. He praised Trump’s resilience in the face of what the attorney general described as a “partisan onslaught” that aimed to undermine a duly elected president.“No tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds,” Barr wrote.“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” he continued, adding: “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.”Jeff Rosen, the deputy attorney general, who Trump called “an outstanding person”, will take over the role of acting attorney general and “highly respected” Richard Donoghue, an official in Rosen’s office, would become the deputy attorney general.Barr surprised many observers by telling the Associated Press in an interview published on 1 December that he disputed the idea, promulgated by the president and his re-election campaign, that there had been widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Trump has attempted to undermine Biden’s victory by pointing to routine, small-scale issues in an election – questions about signatures, envelopes and postal marks – as evidence of widespread fraud across the nation that cost him the election.Trump and some of his allies have also endorsed more bizarre sources of supposed fraud, such as tying Biden’s win to election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chávez” – the former Venezuelan president who died in 2013.“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DoJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said in the interview with the AP.Barr said some people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice system and asking it to step in on allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits and reviewed by state or local officials, not the justice department.Barr added: “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and, people don’t like something – they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate’.”Those comments infuriated Trump and his supporters as they have tried – and failed – to find any meaningful way, via the courts, requested recounts, or pressure on officials, of overturning his defeat by Biden.Speculation about Barr’s future was rife from the moment his AP interview was published, as the most high-profile member of the administration flatly to contradict the president’s continuing arguments that he is the rightful winner.For months, Barr also kept a justice department investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from becoming public, despite calls from Republicans and the White House to launch an inquiry into the younger Biden’s business dealings, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter Biden, long a target of the president and his political allies, announced last week that his tax affairs were under investigation.In the weeks before the 2020 election, Trump publicly berated his attorney general for not prosecuting the president’s political enemies, among them his Democratic opponent and his predecessor, Barack Obama. In an October interview, Trump said Barr would be remembered as a “very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Biden or Obama. Barr’s refusal to act, Trump warned then, could cost him the election.Trump announced in December 2018 that he was nominating Barr to become his next attorney general, replacing Jeff Sessions, a loyalist who angered the president when he stepped aside and allowed his deputy to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s election interference.Barr, 70, had previously served as attorney general in the George Bush administration and was initially viewed by political veterans in Washington as a much-needed stabilizing force who would insulate the department from political attacks. Yet, assuming the post the post as the Russia investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump 2016 election campaign and Russian operatives neared its denouement in early 2019, Barr quickly upended expectations by ferociously attacking the special counsel investigation that examined the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.In his resignation letter, the attorney general said it was the “nadir” of what he believed was a partisan crusade against the president “was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.Critics have often accused Barr of showing more loyalty to the president than to the nation. In one such instance, Barr called a press conference last April and offered a misleading preview of Mueller’s report. He omitted the report’s detailed description of potential obstruction of justice by Trump and falsely claimed the White House had cooperated fully.This set the tone for Trump’s inaccurate trumpeting when the report itself came out, in restricted form, that he and his team had enjoyed “total exoneration” by Mueller – a blatant misinterpretation.And Barr’s protocol-smashing, partisan path continued from there, as he intervened in criminal cases brought against prominent individuals in Trump’s circle, such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.He also initiated an investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation itself, seen as a fundamental undermining of the work of Mueller and his team, an effort that continues. More

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      William Barr: no evidence of voter fraud that would change election outcome

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      William Barr said on Tuesday the US Department of Justice has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.The attorney general’s comments come despite Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen, and his refusal to concede to President-elect Joe Biden.Shortly after the comments were made public, the White House pool report said the attorney general had been seen to enter the building.Trump did not immediately comment. But campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement: “With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.”Barr made his comments in an interview with the Associated Press. US attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up complaints and information, he said, but have uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.Barr has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voting could be vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls.Last month, Barr issued a directive to US attorneys allowing them to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities before the election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud.That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around department policy. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside because of the memo.A Trump team led by Giuliani has been alleging a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to dump millions of illegal votes into the system – with no evidence.They have filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states alleging that partisan poll watchers did not have a clear enough view in some locations and therefore something illegal must have happened.The claims have been repeatedly dismissed including by Republican-appointed judges. Republicans in some battleground states have followed Trump in making unsupported claims.Trump has railed against the election though his own administration has said it was the most secure ever. He recently allowed his administration to begin the transition to Biden, but has still refused to admit he lost.The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in elections: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots to be miscast or lost.Attorney Sidney Powell has spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing US voting information and election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chávez” – the Venezuelan president who died in 2013.Powell was removed from the Trump team after threatening to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” court filing.Barr said: “There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the [Department of Homeland Security] and DoJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.”Barr said people were confusing the use of the federal criminal justice system with allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits. He said a remedy for such complaints would be a top-down audit by state or local officials, not the DoJ.“There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate’,” Barr said.He said first of all there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.“Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations and those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”Giuliani and Ellis insisted they had “gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states” and had “many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud”.“As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DoJ,” they said, adding: “Nonetheless, we will continue our pursuit of the truth through the judicial system and state legislatures.” More

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      DoJ officials condemn Barr's approval of voter fraud inquiries without evidence

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      Current and former US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials have reacted with anger and dismay to the latest move in support of Donald Trump by William Barr, the attorney general who has stoked further discord around the president’s refusal to concede electoral defeat by approving federal investigations into voter fraud, despite little evidence of any wrongdoing.
      Barr’s two-page memo, delivered to the 93 US attorneys across the country on Monday, was immediately condemned by senior figures inside and outside the DoJ.
      In the most dramatic response, the top DoJ official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned from his post, telling colleagues he did so because of the “ramifications” of Barr’s move.
      In a statement, Pilger pointed out that for the past 40 years the justice department had abided by a clear policy of non-intervention in elections, with criminal investigations only carried out after contests were certified and completed.
      Barr’s memo tears up that rule by giving federal prosecutors the go-ahead to investigate what he called “apparently-credible allegations of irregularities”. His action was specifically aimed at closely fought presidential contests in swing states with prolonged vote counts caused by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.
      Complaints about unsubstantiated irregularities have been received by the justice department from three states: Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
      Outside the DoJ, there was widespread unease that Barr has once again mobilised the might of the justice department in a politicised direction. The memo was interpreted as casting doubt on the propriety of the election, which on Saturday was called for Joe Biden following his victory by a clear and growing margin in Pennsylvania.

      Vanita Gupta, a former head of the civil rights division of the DoJ under Barack Obama, denounced Barr’s tactics as “scaremongering”.
      “Let’s be clear, this is about disruption, disinformation and sowing chaos,” she said on Twitter:
      Gupta, now chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Barr’s aim was “stoking division, polarization and lies”, in order to “undermine confidence in outcome with Trump voters and ultimately a Biden administration”.
      Other former prosecutors, legal scholars and election experts debated how serious Barr’s move was likely to be. Steve Vladeck, a specialist in national security law at the University of Texas, stressed that the DoJ had no power to block states from certifying election results – only judges could do that.
      But Vladeck went on to describe the Barr memo as “ominous” in that it “perpetuates the illegitimacy narrative” that has been embraced by Trump and senior Republicans in the hope of clouding Biden’s victory.
      Preet Bharara, who Trump fired in 2017 as US attorney for the southern district of New York, gave a similarly nuanced response. For now, he said, he was “more disgusted than scared” by Barr’s intervention.
      “But stay tuned.”
      Barr specifically refers in his memo to the 40-year-old non-intervention policy over which he has now run roughshod. He denigrates it as a “passive and delayed enforcement approach”, and says it was never a “hard and fast rule”.
      Later in the letter, he softens his advice to federal prosecutors, urging them to follow “appropriate caution” in line with the DoJ’s commitment to “fairness, neutrality and non-partisanship”.
      “Specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries,” he says.
      Those sentences prompted some speculation that Barr was merely going through the motions to placate Trump. The president has by all accounts been on the warpath since the election was called for Biden, ordering his administration to take any action to forward the lie that the election has been stolen.
      But such a theory of Barr’s conduct is countered by the fact that this is not the first time he has attempted to push prosecutors into intervening in the election. Three weeks before election day, he made a similar gambit to lift the decades-old restriction on intervening in the middle of a race.
      Having been appointed by Trump to be the nation’s most senior prosecutor in February 2019, Barr has shown himself willing to side openly with the president in apparent breach of the time-honoured independence of his office. One notable example was his handling of the publication of the Mueller report into collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, which was criticized as spin on behalf of the president.
      More recently, Barr has mirrored Trump’s attempts to sow doubt on the election. In particular, the attorney general has intensified baseless claims from the White House about rampant fraud in mail-in voting – a form of electoral participation that has long been practiced by some states and that was widely used this year.
      Barr went as far as to lie on live television about an indictment for an electoral crime in Texas. Officials were forced to retract the statement, as the supposed incident never took place.
      Doubts about Barr’s intentions were heightened after it was reported that a few hours before the letter to prosecutors was disclosed, he met with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader.
      McConnell has remained in lockstep with Trump, showing no sign he is prepared to break with a president whose resistance to accepting defeat shatters a norm of a peaceful transition of power that has been central to US democracy since 1800.

      McConnell, who is likely to continue to control the Senate for the Republicans unless Democrats can win two runoff elections in Georgia in January, has declared his loyalty to Trump.
      He said: “President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.” More

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      How senior Republicans have reacted to Trump's refusal to concede election – video report

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      Along with the president himself, the vast majority of Republican politicians have refused to accept Trump’s election loss. 
      The former president George W Bush was among a handful of Republicans who have congratulated the Biden-Harris team, while the senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Trump was ‘100% within his rights’ to question election results. 
      The US attorney general, William Barr, has authorised federal prosecutors to begin investigating ‘substantial allegations’ of voter irregularities
      Barr tells prosecutors to investigate ‘vote irregularities’ despite lack of evidence
      Donald Trump has no intention of conceding, campaign insists
      Will Trump accept defeat and leave the White House? Yes, experts say More

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      in Elections

      Barr tells prosecutors to investigate 'vote irregularities' despite lack of evidence

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      The US attorney general, William Barr, has authorized federal prosecutors to begin investigating “substantial allegations” of voter irregularities across the country in a stark break with longstanding practice and despite a lack of evidence of any major fraud having been committed.
      The intervention of Barr, who has frequently been accused of politicizing the DoJ, comes as Donald Trump refuses to concede defeat and promotes a number of legally meritless lawsuits aimed at casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. Joe Biden was confirmed as president-elect on Saturday after he won the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.
      Barr wrote on Monday to US attorneys, giving them the green light to pursue “substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities” before the results of the presidential election in their jurisdictions are certified. As Barr himself admits in his letter, such a move by federal prosecutors to intervene in the thick of an election has traditionally been frowned upon, with the view being that investigations into possible fraud should only be carried out after the race is completed.
      But Barr, who was appointed by Trump in February 2019, pours scorn on such an approach, denouncing it as a “passive and delayed enforcement approach”.
      The highly contentious action, which was first reported by Associated Press, was greeted with delight by Trump supporters but with skepticism from lawyers and election experts. Within hours of the news, the New York Times reported that the justice department official overseeing voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, had resigned from his position.
      “Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,” Pilger reportedly told colleagues in an email, “I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.”
      Doubts about Barr’s intentions were heightened after it was reported that a few hours before the letter to prosecutors was disclosed, he met with Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader.
      McConnell has so far remained in lockstep with Trump. Earlier on Monday he expressed support for the defeated president on the floor of the chamber. He said: “President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
      As news of Barr’s memo circulated, social media lit up. “Here we go,” tweeted Stephanie Cutter, Barack Obama’s deputy campaign manager in the 2012 presidential race after the Barr memo was revealed.
      Mimi Rocha, a former assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York, decried the memo, saying it “negates DoJ policy re not getting involved til after election certified. Not good.” She added though that there were no “clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities”, as cited by Barr, and urged federal lawyers to “remain true to your oaths”.
      The Barr memo is the culmination of months of cumulative controversy in which the attorney general has proven himself willing to imperil the reputation for impartiality of the justice department by following Trump into his election-fraud rabbit hole.
      In particular, he has doubled down on Trump’s baseless claims about rampant fraud in mail-in voting. That included lying on television about an indictment for an electoral crime in Texas that his department later had to concede never took place.
      Barr’s intervention emerged shortly after the Trump campaign filed another longshot lawsuit in Pennsylvania, attempting to block the state from certifying its election results. It was the calling of the Pennsylvania contest on Saturday by media organisations in favor of Biden, who remains about 45,000 votes ahead of Trump in the state, that tipped the Democratic candidate over the 270 electoral college mark and awarded him the presidency.
      The new Pennsylvania lawsuit rehashes many of the already disproven claims that have failed to succeed so far in federal and state courts. The case hangs on the claim – posited without any new hard evidence – that voters were treated differently depending on whether they voted by mail or in person.
      The legal action also claims that almost 700,000 mail-in and absentee ballots were counted in Philadelphia and Allegheny county, both Democratic strongholds, without observers present. That complaint has already been repeatedly debunked.
      Josh Shapiro, the Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania, dismissed the lawsuit as meritless. “I am confident Pennsylvania law will be upheld and the will of the people of the Commonwealth will be respected in this election,” he said. More

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      The real reason Trump is terrified of losing the presidency: fear of prosecution | Samer S Shehata

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      The United States is hardly an autocracy; it might be better described as a flawed democracy. Yet its president, Donald Trump, behaves a lot like an autocrat – and it’s worth remembering, as the election looms, that autocratic leaders do not like to give up their power.
      Obviously, few autocrats are willing to relinquish the benefits that accompany political office. But there is another, more important, reason they often try to retain power at almost any cost, even after losing elections or completing their terms. After two decades of researching and writing about autocratic politics in the Middle East, I call this the autocrat’s dilemma: losing power can expose autocrats to accountability, prosecution and potential jail time. As a result, autocrats are often willing to break laws, rig elections, create chaos and even use violence to retain power.
      If Trump loses the election, there may be calls to investigate and prosecute him for possible crimes involving obstruction of justice, violating the emolument clause of the constitution, and/or tax fraud, among others. Citizen Trump would face investigation without the luxury of “executive privilege” or the legal chicanery of the attorney general, William Barr, who has acted more like Trump’s personal lawyer than the nation’s top law enforcement official, to protect him. Accordingly, Trump has even more reason to lie, cheat and sow discord in order to retain office, because losing the White House could land him in court or even behind bars.
      Although special prosecutor Robert Mueller did not produce a smoking gun proving Trump conspired with Russia in the 2016 election, he clearly stated that the investigation did not exonerate Trump of wrongdoing. After the investigation, over a thousand former federal prosecutors from both parties signed a letter stating that Trump’s conduct as described in the investigation would warrant “multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice” were it not for the Office of Legal Counsel’s policy of not indicting a sitting president.
      More recent criticisms of Mueller from top aides within the investigation allege Mueller did not go far enough in exposing collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. At the very least, there is a strong case that Trump obstructed the investigation. After he leaves office there will be vocal calls to get to the bottom of Russian election interference, his campaign’s alleged collusion, and to hold the former president accountable for obstruction of justice. The outcome could very well be a subpoena for the ex-president or even an indictment.
      Allegations of campaign finance violations related to the Stormy Daniels affair and financial irregularities regarding the president’s inauguration could also expose Trump to legal troubles. But perhaps the most likely reason Trump will end up in court after leaving office concerns his taxes. Trump’s recently revealed tax filings expose a series of ethically dubious and possibly illegal activities. If he loses in November, citizen Trump will likely face increasing pressure from agencies such as the IRS and the New York state attorney general’s office.
      Trump’s tax filings are brimming with shady dealings. In addition to not paying federal income tax in 10 of the 15 years preceding his election – and paying a mere $750 a year in 2016 and 2017 – Trump received a $72.9m refund from the IRS in 2010 after claiming more than a billion dollars in earlier losses. The massive refund is the subject of an ongoing IRS audit; an adverse outcome could force Trump to return the money, which, with penalties and interest, might total more than $100m.
      Trump’s tax filings include other dubious and possibly illegal practices. He paid his daughter Ivanka over $700,000 in “consulting fees” while she was a salaried employee of the Trump Organization. Such high-dollar “business expenses” not only benefited Ivanka, they reduced Trump’s own tax liability.
      An even bigger deduction concerns Trump’s Seven Springs estate an hour’s drive from New York. In addition to claiming a $21m tax deduction for not developing most of the 230-acre property (known as a conservation easement), Trump claimed the estate was an investment and not a personal residence, allowing him to deduct more than $2m in property taxes as business expenses. Yet Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr lived on the compound and the Trump Organization’s official webpage describes it as “a retreat for the Trump family”.

      Trump’s personal debt raises different sorts of questions about potential national security vulnerabilities that arise from a sitting president owing hundreds of millions of dollars to creditors. And the massive debts are another reason why Trump desperately wants to remain in the White House. The president owes over $300m in personally backed loans to Deutsche Bank, Ladder Capital and possibly other creditors, which mature in the next four years. If he were unable to pay back or refinance the loans, Deutsche Bank and Ladder could, although it’s unlikely, take legal action against him. As long as he remains president, however, neither lender would probably call the loans and risk forcing a sitting president into personal bankruptcy.
      Trump desperately wants to retain the presidency – not to “keep America Great” but to protect himself from future prosecution. His embrace of white supremacists and his calls to supporters to monitor polling places on election day (and intimidate Biden voters in the process) is an attempt to engineer an election victory through force. And by disputing the election’s integrity he is inciting post-election violence: another tactic with the same intended goal.
      When past presidents have lost re-election, they often return to their home states to plan presidential libraries, establish philanthropic foundations and give well-compensated corporate speeches. Trump’s post-presidency could look very different. This vote is not simply about an incumbent president standing for re-election: it is about two starkly different futures for Donald Trump.
      Samer S Shehata is an associate professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma More