The Persecution of Attorney General Bill Barr

Rich Terrell

The Morning Briefing: Clowns Vote to Hold Barr in Contempt . . . "The House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt because he refused to turn over the unredacted Mueller report, including material he is legally prevented from releasing to Congress. A copy of the complete report, without the grand jury material, is available for some members to view. No Democrats have gone to read it. Nadler, the chairman of the committee, could go to court to get an order to release the material but he hasn't done that, so one has to wonder if he wants the complete report or he wants to damage the attorney general. That's a rhetorical question. Of course the goal is to create a spectacle and damage Barr." . . .

William French writes at National Review: Against the Persecution of Bill Barr

"The Democratic party’s current war on Attorney General William Barr is one of the most misguided, misplaced bursts of outrage that I’ve seen during the first term of the Trump administration. Barr protected the Mueller investigation, he went above and beyond legal requirements to release Mueller’s report to the public, and he has offered to congressional leaders far more details about the investigation than are publicly available. Yet now he’s subject to congressional contempt proceedings?  "This is nonsense." . . .

One can fake sincerity (Joe Biden does it well) but fear shows itself truly.

 Attorney General William Barr mentions spying, and fear roils the Democrats
. . . "But in Washington, they don’t call it fear. They pretend, rather, that it is the anger of the righteous. Yet it is fear just the same, that treacly Washington bureaucratic and political fear." . . .
. . . It is the same fear that was felt in Rome and later in pre-revolutionary France, and now they feel it in Washington.

"And the man who is causing it all is Attorney General William Barr.

"Because when Barr explained, almost casually and quite publicly just a few weeks ago, that he was looking into the origins of the inquisition of President Donald Trump and that discredited Russian collusion business, and into the “spying” on the Trump campaign, something happened.

"The Washington establishment’s fear rolled over him in waves." . . .

Update: Dems Hold Barr In CONTEMPT, Proving They're Long On Partisanship, Short On Historical Memory

. . . Most Democrats strongly condemned Republicans seven years ago when the House (including several Democrats) voted to hold President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress for failing to turn over thousands of pages documents related to the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. Key distinctions between the two situations illustrate why there is no Republican support for a contempt vote today."

Mike Harris