President Trump announced on Monday that Attorney General William Barr will step down from his role just before Christmas. Barr’s departure, though expected, is yet another loss for an administration hemorrhaging credibility.
Barr has been reportedly on the outs with Trump ever since he broke with the president last month on the issue of widespread voter fraud. Trump insisted that the presidential election was stolen and that a massive voter conspiracy was to blame. Barr not only refused to do as the president asked and appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump’s allegations; he also denied that there was any evidence to support Trump’s theory at all.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said.
Trump’s allies continued to sour toward Barr after it was reported last week that Barr made efforts to withhold information about the federal government’s investigations into Hunter Biden, son of President-elect Joe Biden, from the public until after the presidential election. He did so not because he wanted Biden to win, but because the Justice Department has a clear policy advising investigators against taking overt actions close to an election so as not to be seen as tampering with the outcome.
This is always who Barr has been: a straight-shooter, committed to the law and constitutional order upon which it depends.
As such, he was a villain to both the Left and Right. Democrats accused Barr of being Trump’s lackey repeatedly, and, as of late, Republicans have begun to see Barr as a renegade.
Barr was neither. To be sure, he supported and defended Trump when he believed the law demanded it, even if doing so provoked anger in his own department. But he also understood that what the law required could be different from what the president demanded. And in these instances, his duty was always to the former.
His departure is a blow to the Trump administration, whether the president sees it that way or not. Barr was reasonable and honest, with a clear viewpoint on what justice requires and how law enforcement should operate. And without him, Trump will continue to drag himself down into a partisan sinkhole of his own making.
