Throughout his time as attorney general, William Barr was portrayed in the media as a partisan loyalist who would follow President Trump to the bitter end. To the surprise of many in the media, and to the disappointment of some Trump supporters, it turned out that he was actually a lawman who was out to apply justice in a consistent manner.
Despite liberal fantasies about how Barr was going to help Trump orchestrate a coup, Barr has been an honest broker. He has said that he sees no evidence that fraud was widespread enough to have changed the result of the election and argued that he saw no basis on which to seize voting machines. He also said he opposed efforts to appoint a special counsel to investigate the wild allegations being tossed around regarding election fraud or a special counsel to look into Hunter Biden. Previously, it was revealed that he was aware for months that there was an investigation into Biden, but he kept silent because he did not want to influence the election.
Barr also broke with Trump by identifying Russia as responsible for the recent cyberattacks on the U.S. government.
While these developments struck many as startling, it should not come as a surprise to those who have been following Barr’s actual words and deeds rather than the public caricature of him.
When Barr read Robert’s Mueller report and concluded that the evidence presented against Trump did not amount to obstruction of justice, he was lambasted in the media as a corrupt henchman for Trump.
At the time, however, the argument that Barr made was that he was very concerned about the precedent of charging executives with obstruction while carrying out official acts based on inferences that they had corrupt motives. He feared such a standard could paralyze the executive branch if any acts taken could trigger an investigation into whether the intent behind them was improper. At the minimum, he argued that the bar of evidence to go after an executive branch official had to be set extremely high.
One could agree or disagree with Barr’s view of the power of the executive branch, but those who assumed he was manufacturing a rationale to let Trump off the hook were proven wrong.
It turned out that for the same reason he was unwilling to accuse Trump of obstruction, he was reluctant to aggressively prosecute and seek jail time for former FBI and intelligence officials over the Russia investigation and Spygate. The media uproar over his use of the word “spy” neglected the full context of his quote about the 2016 campaign. “I think spying did occur,” he said. “The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated.”
As Barr leaves his job, he deserves credit for attempting to apply justice in a fair and consistent manner, regardless of whether his conclusions would lead partisans to categorize him either as a Trump toady or as a guardian of the deep state.
