William Barr will not go down as the worst Attorney General of the United States, but only because the latest recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom took the office to even lower lows. Nevertheless, Barr is bad enough. He’s trotting around the globe investigating the investigators, a job that he delegated to U.S. Attorney John Dunham, until Barr done him in. Why does any of this matter? The Attorney General ideally should be the defender of the rule of law, not the President’s personal defender.
Some of Barr’s previous dastardly deeds as a No Goodnik include pardoning key figures in the Iran-contra scandal that sabotaged a years-long investigation into executive-branch lawbreaking that implicated President Reagan. This was accomplished when Barr became attorney general under President George W. H, Bush in 1991. Prior to that, in 1989, he obfuscated the U.S. Congress by releasing a memo that left out key flaws in his theory that the president of the United States could kidnap suspects in foreign countries, which runs afoul of United Nations prohibition of such acts. Congress demanded he release the full memo, but Barr refused, instead releasing a 13-page summary, which omitted the illegality of such state sponsored kidnappings.
If this sounds familiar, it’s exactly Barr’s modus operandi in summarizing the Mueller Report to echo President Trump’s “no collusion” claims, while promoting a theory that the president is above the law and cannot be indicted for anything until he leaves office. Despite his staving off the Mueller Report findings from having any impact on impeachment, he is now involved in the Ukraine scandal that has his name mentioned as the point man for Trump’s illegal seeking of aid from a foreign country against his 2020 chief rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
The cloak and dagger Attorney General has been questioning the Italians, the Brits and the Wizard of Oz to get dirt for his dirty benefactor. The whole plot is to denigrate Mueller’s main factual finding, that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election to aid President Trump. The Trump led ‘corruption’ mission was to keep Congress’s authorized money (some $400 million) from the new Ukrainian President, while he is fighting a war with Putin’s minions in his own country, until he agrees to investigate the Bidens and find Hillary Clinton’s emails on a Ukrainian server. Then this conspiracy theory can sow doubt into Russia being behind Trump’s victory, even though all of our intelligence officials agree with Mueller’s findings.
On a side-note, it should be brought to light that President Trump’s defunding the military to build the wall that he swore Mexico was going to pay for plays right into Putin’s wishes to destabilize the United States military footprint in Europe. Many of the projects that have been abandoned were to bring military installation airfields up to spec to allow for safe landing of our military personnel in an event horizon where such aid is needed to fulfill our NATO commitments in case of Russian aggression, which is how Crimea was taken from the Ukraine. Our acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan made an isolationist strategic claim that European countries needed to step up to cover the cost for the presence of our military by upgrading the airfields themselves.
The real embarrassment for Barr now is that he is implicated as the person Trump told Ukraine’s President Zelensky to contact on the impeachable phone call. He is now a witness to the scandal, willing or not, and should recuse himself from any involvement in defense of Trump’s impeachment proceedings, but we know how little he cares about the rule of law or even appearances. Better yet, Politico has uncovered the real corruption in the Ukraine and it isn’t the Bidens. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, European envoy Sondland and Rudolph Giuliani are all involved in trying to make changes to Ukraine’s huge state-run natural gas company Naftogaz to expand its supervisory board. Now that is how President Trump’s own emissaries are spreading corruption from the American swamp to the Ukraine!
Note: After this was posted, two associates of Rudy Giuliani (his Ukranian go-betweens, Parnas & Fruman who are accused of making illegal campaign contributions to President Trump’s campaign) were arrested at Dulles Airport as they attempted to leave the country. They were scheduled to be deposed by committees investigating the impeachment of President Trump.