I was once at a dinner attended by Attorney General William Barr. A conservative journalist who was also there pressed him in a voice heavy with frustration to pursue conspiratorial lines of inquiry against President Trump’s perceived enemies. Barr is polite and low-key almost to a fault, but he eventually tired of this sniping, looked his interlocutor in the eye, and asked, “Do you think I’m stupid?”
His unusually withering dismissal of an intemperate right-winger comes to mind now that Washington is in ferment over accusations that Barr is Trump’s sock puppet — “wingman” is how Eric Holder described his own relationship with President Barack Obama — and is thereby undermining the Department of Justice.
More than 1,100 former DOJ staff recently demanded Barr’s departure for deciding that the treatment of Roger Stone, a onetime adviser to Trump, was too harsh. Trump tweeted — when doesn’t he? — about the injustice of Stone’s recommended sentence of seven to nine years behind bars. Barr complained, reasonably enough, that the president’s tweets made it “impossible for me to do my job.” In short, Barr made a principled intervention, and then the president made his ablest lieutenant look bad by incontinent tweeting.
The abundantly clear truth is that Barr is the opposite of a political hack. Though obviously and properly a supporter of the president, he does not allow his loyalty to undermine his probity and consummate professionalism.
That’s actually why he’s under attack. It’s what makes him so dangerous to Trump’s most active critics. He will follow evidence where it leads without fear or favor. He won’t prosecute cases he deems weak, nor will he shy away from others where he believes he can secure a conviction. He’s the kind of attorney general who makes wrongdoers tremble.
If Barr were to leave the administration, it would be a disaster, whether he resigned or was fired. Trump has no one as capable. Barr demonstrated a mastery of his subject at his confirmation hearing and has demonstrated a massive competence and dignified imperturbability ever since.
His departure would crush the spirits of conservatives because they know, just as the trembling wrongdoers know, that Barr is the last best hope that justice will be delivered to the deep state shysters who invented the Russia collusion hoax and used it for years to undermine a president they did not like and whose fair election they refuse to acknowledge.
If Barr ceased to be attorney general, it would be said to cast a shadow over the credibility of John Durham’s much-needed criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia fable and its various offshoots. Inspector General Michael Horowitz could investigate only what went on in the DOJ, but Durham’s reach is much wider.
He can look into the activities of such dark partisans as former CIA Director John Brennan. And he should. He can probe the decidedly odd case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was prosecuted for lying despite the fact that FBI officials had concluded he didn’t do so, which was confirmed to Congress by former FBI Director James Comey.
Perhaps none of this will produce prosecutions, although tough prosecutors such as Durham tend to find cases once they’re put on to a scent. But even if there are no indictments, it’s vital to get to the bottom of the falsely predicated scandal that has plagued the Trump presidency. The public needs to know what happened. A thorough investigation is required to disinfect our democracy. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wildly successful efforts to sow mistrust in American government cannot be reversed unless and until the public is confident that ugly facts are not being swept under the carpet.
The linchpin of this effort is Barr. If he were to be ousted, there would be a storm on Capitol Hill. Senate Justice Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, among others, would be apoplectic, and the president would squander the backing of his staunchest and most powerful supporters. It would be one clumsily self-inflicted wound too many. It’s quite possible that if Barr left the Cabinet, Trump would be unable to get his replacement confirmed by the Senate. He could arrive at Election Day (now less than nine months away) with only an acting attorney general and with voters no clearer about how the monumental fiasco of the past four years was perpetrated and by whom.
Barr does not need his current job; he’s done it ably before. But both the country and the president need him to do it.
