Attorney General William Barr says he wants to preserve the presidency, not necessarily protect President Trump.
“I felt the rules were being changed to hurt Trump, and I thought it was damaging for the presidency over the long haul,” Barr told the Wall Street Journal, explaining why he accepted the opportunity to return as head of the Justice Department. Barr previously was attorney general during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.
“At every grace juncture the presidency has done what it is supposed to do, which is to provide leadership and direction,” Barr said. “If you destroy the presidency and make it an errand boy for Congress, we’re going to be a much weaker and more divided nation.”
Barr has consistently voiced support for the preservation of executive power regardless of what party is in the White House. For example, the Justice Department said that Barr recommended that the White House under the Clinton administration not reauthorize the independent counsel statute examining the Whitewater land deal.
He has only been back at the Justice Department for three months, but Barr has become a top target of Democrats who accuse him of protecting President Trump and acting as his personal attorney. The House Judiciary Committee voted this month to hold Barr in contempt of Congress for not releasing an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Before the panel’s vote, Barr encouraged Trump to assert executive privilege over the material.
Barr also faced backlash after it was revealed Mueller wrote him a letter claiming that his initial four-page summary of the investigation’s principal findings “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the probe.
Mueller’s report concluded there was insufficient evidence to show criminal collusion between members of Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin, but it did not make a determination on obstruction of justice. Barr and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined there was a lack of evidence to prove that Trump committed an obstruction crime.
