Despite their desperate efforts to distort the truth, the Democrats have failed to taint Attorney General William Barr’s reputation and integrity.
According to a recent Hill-HarrisX poll, 54% of Americans believe that Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was “largely accurate,” a clear sign that the Democratic Party’s campaign to discredit the head of the Justice Department is failing.
Sadly, the Democrats are not about to abandon their disinformation tactics — even now that the Mueller report has been released to the public, discrediting the falsehoods they’ve been spinning for more than two years. In fact, the criticism of Barr and President Trump has only intensified, suggesting that the witch hunt is far from over. If anything, it’s expanding to target Barr as well now, with Democrats demanding his impeachment and scheduling a hearing to hold him in contempt of Congress.
This is a blatant abuse of power, not to mention constitutional overreach. Barr was required by law to make certain redactions, and he complied with the law. Yet the rule of law has never satisfied the Democrats, who continue to pretend that Barr’s legal compliance is just cover for a personal agenda.
“The determinations you have reached regarding obstruction and the manner in which you chose to characterize the Special Counsel’s investigation only raise further questions, particularly in light of the Special Counsel’s decision to refrain from making ‘a traditional prosecutorial judgment,'” Reps. Jerry Nadler, Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff, Eliot Engel, Richard Neal, and Maxine Waters wrote in a letter to Barr following his initial summary, while he was still preparing the final report for release.
Even though the main conclusions that Barr outlined in his summary perfectly matched Mueller’s findings, the Democrats tore into the full report, determined to discredit Barr, cherry-picking information that they believed would be damaging to the administration.
They even went after Barr for deciding to hold an explanatory press conference immediately before releasing the full report, baselessly accusing the attorney general of going out of his way to defend Trump.
Their most vitriolic and unhinged attacks, however, came after Barr graciously agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but declined to attend a House Judiciary Committee hearing the next day due to procedural disputes with the Democratic majority.
During the Senate hearing, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly slandered Barr as a perjurer, even demanding that he be impeached based on a tortured interpretation of one of the answers he gave during a previous congressional hearing. After Barr rejected the House committee’s outlandish terms for his appearance, Democrats began openly and excitedly discussing the prospect of throwing him in jail.
Contrary to the false Democratic Party narrative, however, Barr’s handling of the Mueller report was positively superb. He struck a fair balance between the interests of privacy and disclosure while adhering strictly to the letter of the law.
Since Barr was legally obligated to redact information gleaned from grand jury testimony, classified materials, and details about ongoing investigations — to say nothing of Department of Justice policies forbidding him from revealing investigatory findings about individuals who are not being charged with a crime — the president’s political opponents wasted no time complaining about “transparency” and insinuating that Barr withheld incriminating information from the public version of the Mueller report.
For weeks, Barr also worked together with Mueller and his team to redact the relevant portions of his findings, ensuring that the special counsel had substantial involvement in the process.
The only information that the Democrats will ever consider to be “transparent” is information that is damaging to President Trump. That’s why they continue to search for “transparency” in the redacted Mueller memo.
Barr could not have done a better job handling the review of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — and the public know it. Sadly, this won’t stop the Democrats from continuing their misinformation campaign against the attorney general.
Jenna Ellis (@realJennaEllis) is a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board. She is a constitutional law attorney, radio host, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
