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Barr lied. It is that simple. Yesterday he said that Berman had resigned. That was not true.
This is not, of course, the first time that Barr has proven to be a stone cold liar. He lied about the contents of the Mueller report. /1
This is not, of course, the first time that Barr has proven to be a stone cold liar. He lied about the contents of the Mueller report. /1
But the question is why? And the answer lies at the intersection of the effort to fire Berman (now, apparently, approved by the President -- though maybe Barr is lying about that too) and the firing of Jessie Liu. /2
By firing Liu, Barr and his henchmen took control of the DC US Atty's Office. With that control they intervened politically in the sentencing of Roger Stone, and now in an effort to dismiss the case against Flynn. This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice. /3
He purports to uphold the forms of justice (DOJ formal control of US Atty's) while undermining the substance of justice. If Barr succeeds in dismissing the Flynn case, even after Flynn has twice pled guilty he will set a precedent for intervening in any other case where /4
he successfully removes a US Attorney and replaces him with his own sycophant. Barr is attempting to use the same playbook in New York -- replace Berman with his own toady and then dismiss or short circuit all the pending cases that implicate Trump. /5
We know that Trump's various organizations are under investigation. We know that Giuliani is under investigation. We do not know who else is a subject of inquiry. But what we do know for sure is that Barr's intervention was intended to protect Trump -- as has EVERY ACTION /6
he has taken since he took office. He is more like a consigliere to Don Trump than the Attorney General of the United States, working for the American people. /7
But even that is too kind to Barr. He has demonstrated a fine disregard for any semblance of the rule of law or the independence of the Department of Justice and he will do long-term damage to the fabric of American justicae. Given its authoritarian nature, we might /8
call it the Orbanification of the American system of governance. In any event Bill Barr is making John Mitchell look a man of principle. /fin
