Remember back in the before times when members of both parties were horrified that Trump appeared to be hectoring Jeff Sessions into resigning as attorney general?
It was clear to anyone paying attention that Trump wanted Sessions — who had recused himself from the Mueller investigation — to act not as the nation’s top law enforcement official but as Trump’s personal Roy Cohn.
Well, in Bill Barr, Trump has found his mob consigliere — and he never fails to disappoint.
The latest? Barr is disputing a new inspector general report that concludes the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s presidential campaign was justified.
The Washington Post:
Attorney General William P. Barr has told associates he disagrees with the Justice Department’s inspector general on one of the key findings in an upcoming report — that the FBI had enough information in July 2016 to justify launching an investigation into members of the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation. The discord could be the prelude to a major fissure within federal law enforcement on the controversial question of investigating a presidential campaign.
Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016, these people said.
Yeah, that’s not a shocker. Barr has made clear ever since the Mueller investigation ended that he was more interested in being Trump’s PR rep than a force for justice.
And — oh, hey — we’ve noticed:
Barr’s public defenses of President Trump, including his assertion that intelligence agents spied on the Trump campaign, have led Democrats to accuse him of acting like the president’s personal attorney and eroding the independence of the Justice Department. But Trump and his Republican allies have cheered Barr’s skepticism of the Russia investigation.
Once again, Barr is simply generating headlines for low-information Trump supporters (forgive the redundancy, please). And it works because they’re — what’s the word? — vacuousfuckingidiots. They can now dismiss this as another story with two sides, even if it’s really, really not. But this is the AG of the country disputing consensus reality, so it’s a win for the deeply dishonest Trump administration.
Which, of course, makes it a huge loss (again) for the country.
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