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      William Barr told Murdoch to 'muzzle' Fox News Trump critic, new book says

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      The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network.Barr’s meeting with Murdoch, at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, was widely reported at the time, with speculation surrounding its subject. According to Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, subjects covered included media consolidation and criminal justice reform.“But it was also about Judge Andrew Napolitano.”Stelter’s in-depth look at Fox News, its fortunes under Trump and its links to his White House will be published on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.In early 2019 it was reported that Napolitano, a New Jersey superior court judge who joined Fox News in 1998, told friends he had been on Trump’s shortlist for the supreme court. But he broke ranks later in the year, labeling Trump’s approaches to Ukraine, seeking political dirt on rivals, “both criminal and impeachable behavior”.“The criminal behavior to which Trump has admitted,” Napolitano wrote, in a column dated 3 October, “is much more grave than anything alleged or unearthed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and much of what Mueller revealed was impeachable.”Citing an unnamed source, Stelter writes that Trump “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.”Barr has been widely accused of riding roughshod over the rule of law, in service of Trump and his own authoritarian view of the presidency.Though Barr’s words to Murdoch “carried a lot of weight”, Stelter writes, “no one was explicitly told to take Napolitano off the air”. Instead, Stelter reports, Napolitano found digital resources allocated elsewhere, saw a slot on a daytime show disappear, and was not included in coverage of the impeachment process.In Stelter’s telling, Napolitano thought he was being kept off air by “25-year-old producers” who didn’t think viewers could handle his analysis. Stelter, however, says an unnamed “twentysomething staffer” confirmed that one host, Maria Bartiromo, would only book Napolitano to discuss non-Trump topics, because he would upset Bartiromo too much if he criticised the president.Fox News’ audience remains loyal to Trump as his campaign for re-election continues. Some Fox employees, Stelter writes, “justified the benching of the judge by claiming that viewers hated him: ‘Why are we going to book someone who kills our ratings?’”Napolitano has continued to appear on Fox News and to publish opinion columns. He has remained critical of Trump, for example slamming the actions of federal officers sent to confront protesters in Portland, Oregon; opposing attempts to provide coronavirus relief without congressional involvement; and saying Senate Republicans should have called new witnesses in the president’s impeachment trial.He has also had harsh words for Barr, for example calling his conduct in the case of Trump ally Roger Stone “Stalinistic”; blasting his handling of the Mueller report to Trump’s advantage; and hitting him for “insulting” Congress.Napolitano did, however, back Barr’s attempt to drop charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials. More

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      Is Trump's top cop, attorney general William Barr, a danger to democracy?

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      William Barr was hungry. “Mr Chairman, could we take a five-minute break?” the attorney general asked Jerry Nadler of the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee. “No,” retorted Nadler, his hearing almost done. Barr responded sardonically: “You’re a real class act.”It was pure Barr: a proud, combative, unflappable and unapologetic partisan warrior in the loyal service of the White House.During the five-hour session on Capitol Hill in Washington this week, Barr made clear why he has been dubbed Donald Trump’s faithful protector and personal henchman. He defended using federal forces in US cities, denied giving Trump’s allies favorable treatment and demurred on issues such as foreign election interference or whether November’s poll can be postponed.For critics, it was proof positive that Barr’s unswerving loyalty to the president has torn down the wall that separates the White House and justice department and ensures law enforcement operates independent of politics. Some believe he now poses an existential threat to democracy itself.“Because of his position as the attorney general, he has control over a lot of what’s acceptable and what isn’t under the law up until the point where the federal judiciary can stop him. It makes him very dangerous, especially when you’re dealing with a president who has no regard for the constitution or the rule of law,” said Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill.During his 18 months in office, Barr, 70, has backed Trump even as he defies norms, stokes division and is buffeted by the coronavirus pandemic, economic slump and tumbling poll numbers. Democrats have demanded his impeachment, accused him of politicizing the justice department and enabling an “imperial presidency” like no other.Democrat Joe Biden, Trump’s election opponent, tweeted on Thursday: “Bill Barr is the Attorney General of the United States – not the president’s private attorney.”Barr, a devout Catholic and keen bagpiper, previously served as attorney general under President George HW Bush from 1991 to 1993. This raised hopes that he would be an establishment Republican who could check Trump’s impulses, maintain the department’s independence and offer normality in an era that is anything but.Those hopes were badly misplaced.In reality he had always been an advocate of expansive presidential power and a hard line on fighting crime. He is therefore seen as a perfect fit for Trump, who has repeatedly tested the limits of executive authority and is now pushing a “law and order” theme for his election campaign against Biden.Weeks after his Senate confirmation Barr cleared Trump of obstruction of justice allegations even when Robert Mueller, the special counsel, did no such thing, and produced a summary of Mueller’s Russia investigation that set an unduly rosy narrative for the president.Barr has since made good on Trump’s rallying cry to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation in what Democrats see as a politically motivated attempt to damage Biden, the former vice-president, ahead of the election.He has also been sharply criticized for a decision to drop the prosecution of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and urging a more lenient sentence for Trump’s ally Roger Stone, a move that prompted the entire trial team’s departure. The Flynn dismissal will be reviewed by a federal appeals court but Trump commuted Stone’s sentence altogether. More

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      'Shame on you': Democrats attack Barr for carrying out Trump agenda

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      Democrats clashed angrily with Donald Trump’s attorney general on Tuesday, over the aggressive deployment of federal agents to US cities three months before a presidential election.William Barr faced a difficult grilling during a hearing in Congress that proved combative, contentious and indicative of Washington’s bitter divide.Democrats on the House judiciary committee pointed to the use of federal law enforcement to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, Washington, last month so Trump could stage a photo op, and a harsh crackdown on protests in Portland, Oregon.“The president wants footage for his campaign ads, and you appear to be serving it up to him as ordered,” Jerry Nadler, the committee chairman, told Barr.“You use pepper spray and truncheons on American citizens. You did it here in Washington. You did it in Lafayette Square. You expanded to Portland. Now you are projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives. Shame on you, Mr Barr. Shame on you.”The attorney general denied the interventions were motivated by Trump’s re-election.“I just reject the idea that the department has flooded anywhere and attempted to suppress demonstrators,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, if you take Portland, the courthouse is under attack.“The federal resources are inside the perimeter, around the courthouse defending it from almost two months of daily attacks where people march to the court, try to gain entrance and have set fires, thrown things, used explosives and injured police, including just this past weekend, perhaps permanently blinding three federal officers with lasers.”Barr added: “We are on the defence. We’re not out looking for trouble.”Like so many other hearings of the Trump era, the session highlighted America’s debilitating polarisation. Barr sat expressionless as Nadler delivered a scathing opening statement.“Your tenure is marked by a persistent war against the department’s professional core in an apparent effort to secure favours for the president,” the Democrat said. “In your time at the department, you have aided and abetted the worst failings of this president.”Barr’s justice department, Nadler continued, has violated constitutional rights, downplayed the effects of systemic racism, expressed open hostility to Black Lives Matter, spread disinformation about voter fraud and failed to enforce voting rights laws, amplified the president’s conspiracy theories about the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and interfered with criminal investigations to protect the president and his allies.“The message these actions send is clear: in this justice department, the president’s enemies will be punished and his friends will be protected, no matter the cost,” said Nadler, whose involvement in a minor car accident had caused a delay.Jim Jordan, a close Trump ally and the top Republican on the committee, gave a radically different account.“Spying. That one word. That’s why they’re after you, Mr Attorney General.”Jordan said Barr has spoken “the truth” that Barack Obama’s administration spied on the Trump campaign, a claim that has repeatedly been debunked.He then proceeded to play a selectively edited video for nearly eight minutes which showed TV hosts and Obama saying the words “peaceful protests”, then cut to the grieving family of David Dorn, an African American retired police captain killed last month in St Louis, Missouri, then to undated, unlocated footage of people jumping on cars, buildings ablaze, an injured officer, a looted shop and people yanking and chainsawing a fence.The clips echoed talking points by Trump and conservative media.In his own opening statement, Barr acknowledged that “the horrible killing” of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by police in Minneapolis “jarred the whole country” but insisted police forces were more diverse than ever before.“According to statistics compiled by the Washington Post, the number of unarmed black men killed by police so far this year is eight. The number of unarmed white men killed by police over the same time period is 11 … And the overall number of police shootings has been decreasing.”Trump has quoted similar statistics, which fail to acknowledge that black people, who make up about 13% of the US population, are disproportionately affected by deadly police violence.Barr added: “Unfortunately, some have chosen to respond to George Floyd’s death in a far less productive way – by demonising the police … and making grossly irresponsible proposals to defund the police … Violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims.”Pressed by Nadler, Barr acknowledged that Trump’s re-election comes up at cabinet meetings but denied he had discussed it in connection with operations in Portland, Chicago and elsewhere.“I would like to pick the cities based on law and enforcement need,” he argued.Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas questioned Barr on whether he considered the killing of Floyd to be indicative of a systemic problem in policing. He said: “I don’t agree there is systemic racism in police departments generally in this country.”The attorney general faced hard-hitting questions for pushing for a more lenient prison sentence for Trump’s ally Roger Stone, convicted of witness tampering and making false statements, a move which prompted the entire trial team’s departure. Trump eventually commuted Stone’s sentence, sparing him prison.Barr said: “Stone was prosecuted under me. I said all along I thought that was a righteous prosecution. I thought he should go to jail.”But prosecutors were advocating for a sentence twice as long as justice department policy would recommend, he contended.“I agree that the president’s friends don’t deserve special breaks but they also don’t deserve to be treated more harshly than other people and sometimes that’s a difficult decision to make, especially when you know you’re going to be castigated for it.”Jordan’s video stunt provoked widespread criticism. Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, tweeted: “When do we get to the part where they set fire to the Reichstag and Bill Barr comes to the rescue?” More

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      US attorney general may be using Assange case for political ends, court told

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      The US attorney general, William Barr, may be using Julian Assange’s extradition case in the UK for political ends, the WikiLeaks founder’s defence team alleged during a court hearing at which he appeared by video link from prison for the first time in months.It was a fact that Donald Trump had described the defence case as “a plot by the Democrats”, Edward Fitzgerald QC told the hearing at Westminster magistrates court.Fitzgerald said a new superseding US indictment, produced months after the start of attempts in the UK to secure his extradition, had been “sprung” on his defence team.The indictment, which had not yet been formally laid before the court, supersedes previous indictments brought in February and which related to 2010 and 2011.A US grand jury had previously indicted Assange on 18 charges – 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act – around conspiracy to receive, obtaining and disclosing classified diplomatic and military documents.The details in the new indictment – publicised last month by the US Department of Justice – focus on conferences in 2009 in the Netherlands and Malaysia at which US prosecutors say Assange tried to recruit hackers who could find classified information, including in relation to a “most wanted leaks” list posted on the WikiLeaks website.The hearing on Monday was the latest in a series of administrative hearings. Chaotic arrangements meant journalists, legal observers and some lawyers had difficulty accessing it remotely to listen in. The full hearing of the extradition case has been postponed until September due to the Covid-19 pandemic.Wearing a beige sweater and a pink shirt, Assange eventually appeared from Belmarsh prison after an earlier attempt was aborted.Fitzgerald told the hearing it would be improper if the new indictment led to the postponement of the hearing until after the November presidential election in the US.Judge Vanessa Baraitser told the hearing that the deadline had arrived for any further evidence before the extradition hearing, aside from psychiatric reports. She said she expected all parties to attend the hearing in September in person.Outside the court, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said: “The ‘new’ superseding indictment actually contains nothing new. All the alleged events have been known to the prosecution for years.“It contains no new charges. What’s really happening here is that despite its decade-long head-start, the prosecution are still unable to build a coherent and credible case. So they’ve scrapped their previous two indictments and gone for a third try.”US Department of Justice authorities have said: “The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019. It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.” More

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      Barr condemns Disney and Hollywood for 'kowtowing' to China

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      The US attorney general, William Barr, has assailed the Walt Disney Company and Hollywood studios, accusing them of “kowtowing” to the Chinese Communist party.Barr’s allegations are part of a sustained diplomatic and public relations offensive by the Trump administration against Beijing, which the attorney general accused of engaging in “economic blitzkrieg – an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s pre-eminent superpower”.In a speech in Michigan, Barr railed against US corporate leaders whom he accused of abetting China’s hegemonic aims, particularly in the film industry. He said Disney had initially resisted Chinese pressure not to make the 1997 film Kundun, about the Dalai Lama and Beijing’s annexation of Tibet.“But that moment of courage wouldn’t last long,” Barr noted. China banned Disney films, leading to an apology from the company for making Kundun. The management then lobbied China to build a Disneyland in Shanghai, allowing Chinese officials to have a role in running the theme park.Barr alleged the officials “display hammer-and-sickle insignia at their desks and attend party lectures during business hours”.“If Disney and other American corporations continue to bow to Beijing, they risk undermining both their own future competitiveness and prosperity, as well as the classical liberal order that has allowed them to thrive,” Barr said.The Disney company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.The attorney general also criticised Hollywood studios for bowing to Chinese pressure to tweak scripts in return for Chinese distribution, citing two cases in which the nationalities of characters were allegedly changed so as not to irritate Beijing.Beijing objected to a virus in a zombie apocalypse film, World War Z, being shown as originating in China, and a mystic character, the “Ancient One” in the fantasy film, Dr Strange, was changed from being Tibetan to Celtic, to avoid upsetting China, Barr said.The attorney general also lashed out at US technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Cisco, calling them “pawns of Chinese influence”.“All too often, for the sake of short-term profits, American companies have succumbed to that influence – even at the expense of freedom and openness in the United States,” he said.Cisco rejected Barr’s allegation it had helped the Communist party build “the Great Firewall of China”, which Barr referred to as the world’s “most sophisticated system for Internet surveillance and censorship”.In an emailed statement to the Guardian, Cisco said it “builds its products to global standards, and Cisco does not supply equipment to China that is customized in any way to facilitate blocking of access or surveillance of users”.“The products we supply to China are the same we provide worldwide, and we comply fully with all export control rules applicable to China including those related to human rights,” the company statement said.Apple also responded to Barr’s criticism of its decision to transfer a portion of its iCloud data to servers in China, on the grounds that it would make it easier for Beijing to conduct electronic surveillance.The company emailed a statement dating from May saying: “We sell the same iPhone everywhere, we don’t store customers’ passcodes and we don’t have the capacity to unlock passcode-protected devices. In data centers, we deploy strong hardware and software security protections to keep information safe and to ensure there are no backdoors into our systems. All of these practices apply equally to our operations in every country in the world.” More

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      Roger Stone case: Trump ally given special treatment, Congress hears

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      A federal prosecutor who was part of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation told Congress on Wednesday Roger Stone, a close ally of Donald Trump, was given special treatment before sentencing because of his relationship with the US president. “What I heard repeatedly was that Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his […] More