THE US A.G. PROVES HE’S THE PRESIDENT’S PERSONAL ATTORNEY

…Based on all Bill Barr's actions, he is not the “People’s Attorney”

House’s GOP members worked to help the A.G. be the president’s attorney

Well, if you watched the testimony of AG William Barr with the Democratically controlled House Judiciary Committee, you saw that, as we suspected, Mr. Barr is not the Attorney General of the American people.  Bill Barr is instead, acting as the personal attorney of the President of the United States.

Barr is Trump’s legal helper in today's politics from American policing to anti-BLM protesters.  He is also a legal adviser for getting involved in the criminal investigations of Trump’s allies such as Michal Flynn and Roger Stone.

So, what exactly do we take away from the House testimony?

First, as I said, we need to understand that the Attorney General is supposed to be non-partisan.  Bill Barr has made sure that he is a loyal defender of Donald Trump, and he will do the president bidding whenever possible.  As the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in his opening statement, “you [Barr] have aided and abetted the worst failings of this president.”

Bill Barr came ready to defend himself from such accusations, and the Republicans on the committee repeatedly gave him the opportunity to defend himself.

It was disgusting to hear the comments that Barr had about our totally ignorant president.  He even had the gall to say: “From my experience, the president has played a role properly and traditionally played by [US] presidents.”

It almost made you want to throw-up upon hearing that crap.

It was so partisan, that you started wondering if Trump had some serious dirt on Barr, just as it seems that Vladimir Putin apparently has some serious dirt on the president.  That’s what makes Trump so enamored with Russia's Putin.

We don’t know what happens behind closed doors between Trump and Barr, but Barr’s projection of the president is just not consistent with Trump’s public comments on law enforcement.  Trump regularly attacks law enforcement when investigations don’t go his way.

In his written opening statement, Barr accused Democrats in Congress of trying to “discredit” him…ya think?  “I am supposedly punishing the president’s enemies and helping his friends,” Barr said.  Then he challenged his critics to point to one Trump enemy he has unfairly indicted.  But Barr is smart enough to not have indicted a so called, "Trump enemy".

On the friends front, Barr said, “The president’s friends don’t deserve special breaks, but they also don’t deserve to be treated more harshly than other people.”  Sorry, Mr. Barr, following the legal recommendations of sentencing terms is not being "harsh".

In the reducing of Roger Stone’s sentence, that was an act that led all four federal prosecutors on the case to resign from the case in protest.  One prosecutor testified to Congress last month that the Justice Department had reduced the sentence for “political reasons.”   Stone had received a revised,  lower sentence from Bill Barr, and then Trump commuted that sentence altogether.  Barr has implied he doesn’t agree with the president’s commutation of Stone's sentence. But then, Barr said: “Do you think it’s fair for a 67-year-old man to be sentenced to prison for seven to nine years?”

It’s not the AG’s job to deal with fairness of a 67 year old man that lied multiple times to a properly selected American jury.

Barr did an about-face on former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and he dropped the charges to which Flynn had previously pleaded guilty….twice.  Barr had even more gall to then say: “There was no basis to investigate Flynn,” Barr said this of the FBI, but that was not his call to counter the FBI's findings.

“Your opening statement reads like it was written by Alex Jones or Roger Stone,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) told Barr, referring to two of Trump’s political allies.

The worst part of the testimony is that Barr is not backing down from sending federal agents into American cities.

There is a giant difference between how Barr, the president, and the Republican defenders in Congress view federal police presence in US cities, and how the Democrats and many peaceful protesters see it.

Barr is arguing that Portland, Or. officials abdicated their duty to keep the peace and that federal officials had to take over to protect the federal courthouse.

“What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called a protest.  It is, by any objective measure, an assault on the government of the United States,” Barr said in his opening statement.

Then why are the feds throwing peaceful Portland protesters into unmarked vans and hauling them away?

Democrats argue that Trump is co-opting federal law enforcement for his political benefit, mainly to scare suburban voters into voting for him and to distract from his failure to keep the coronavirus in check. And they accuse Barr of being a willing Trump toady.

The protests across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis in May had been waning.  That is, until Barr sent federal agents to Portland, where there were still some nightly clashes between protesters and police. That move has stirred up even more protests across the nation.

Now the Justice Department inspector general’s office is investigating federal police actions against protesters in Portland.  Demonstrators have report and have been videoed being clubbed and thrown into unmarked vans. The Justice Department will also look at what happened in D.C., where in June, federal agents fired chemical agents at largely peaceful protesters, clearing a park across from the White House.  Barr continued to deny that agents had fired tear gas.  But the chemical compounds in what they fired are basically the same as tear gas.

Barr is also sending federal police to other cities as part of what he says is a separate project to help fight violent crime, not quell protests.  Some mayors, including in Chicago and Kansas City, Mo., have said they’ll cautiously welcome any federal help, as long as it’s not targeted at stirring up trouble on the streets.  We’ll see how that works in those two cities.

But the issues don’t stop there.

Barr also would not say that a president shouldn’t accept foreign help to get elected

When asked by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) about the appropriateness of having foreign election assistance, Attorney General Barr first said, "It depends."

Yes, he actually started this statement by suggesting that perhaps there were OK ways for a foreign power to help with a US election…..?

In probably one of the most stunning exchanges of the day, Barr at first did not denounce clearly, such illegal behavior.

Per Cicilline: Is it ever appropriate, sir, for the president to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election?

Barr: “It depends what kind of assistance.”

Cicilline again repeated: Is it ever appropriate for the president or a presidential candidate to accept or solicit foreign assistance of any kind in his or her election?

Barr hesitated, and after a very, ‘pregnant pause,’ he finally, quietly, said: “No, it’s not appropriate”.

Foreign help, of any kind, in an election is absolutely illegal. The House had impeached Trump on the accusations that he tried to get the Ukraine to make former vice president Joe Biden, now his 2020 opponent, look bad.  The Senate didn't have the "cojones" to follow-through with the impeachment.

This is only my first blast at the US Attorney General.

More to come later.

Copyright G. Ater 2020