By DEXTER DUGGAN
Presidents replacing their Cabinet members isn’t unusual. Republican Donald Trump seemed to have selected an attorney general who could earn his trust, William Barr, after Trump’s rocky relationship with the attorney general he began his administration with, Jeff Sessions. Sessions was a traditionalist conservative but apparently an inept administrator.
The Catholic Barr seemed likely to stand up for the traditional values that Trump wanted his administration to champion, and previously had served as attorney general under GOP President George H. W. Bush in the early 1990s.
In October 2019 Barr while attorney general gave a speech on religious liberty at the University of Notre Dame’s Law School. The following month, the conservative Heritage Foundation posted an article saying that “(b)y the time he finished that speech, left-wing writers were pounding their keyboards with hair-on-fire indignation. . . .
“He argued that secularists have attacked religion and those who hold religious beliefs with ‘social, educational, and professional ostracism,’ lawsuits, and social media campaigns,” the Heritage article added.
“Those who practice their faith publicly are shamed or sued into submission, while those who hold their beliefs privately are encouraged to keep their beliefs quiet under threats of public censure or ridicule,” it described Barr as saying.
Trump intended to undo the hostility to conservatives and religious believers that his presidential predecessor, Democrat leftist Barack Obama, created.
The attorney general isn’t supposed to be the president’s personal lawyer, but Obama’s first A.G., leftist Eric Holder, proudly proclaimed he was Obama’s “wingman” — meaning a fighter very involved on behalf of that president’s political combat missions.
Politico reported on April 4, 2013, that when Holder was asked when he might leave that A.G. job, he replied: “I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, there’s still work to be done. I’m still the president’s wingman, so I’m there with my boy. So we’ll see.” By “boy,” Holder meant Obama. Imagine media’s howling fury if a conservative Republican had called the black Obama his “boy.”
Then Obama’s second attorney general, Loretta Lynch, was exposed as having had a secret meeting on the tarmac of the main Phoenix airport in June 2016 with corrupt former president Bill Clinton while Clinton’s corrupt wife and Democrat presidential candidate that year, Hillary, was under investigation by the Justice Department’s FBI.
A Phoenix television reporter received a tip that this eyebrow-raising meeting occurred. When he asked Lynch about it, she tried to laugh it off as a chance encounter where the two of them chatted about grandchildren and golf.
June is traditionally the hottest month of the year in the desert metropolis of Phoenix, with the highs often at 110 degrees or more, and even healthy people probably play golf before the morning sun is far above the horizon — hardly a challenge likely for the aging former president and heart-surgery survivor to undertake.
But these were the sorts of embarrassments for Democrats that their lapdog dominant media dismiss, even though they remain alert to police the behavior of conservative Republican presidential appointees.
Barr served as Trump’s A.G. from February 2019 until just before Christmas 2020. He apparently incurred the president’s ire for seeming to lack interest in fraud scandals in the 2020 election. So Trump didn’t even wait until the next inauguration, in January, to remove him.
On December 26 Trump tweeted: “The ‘Justice’ Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history, despite overwhelming evidence. They should be ashamed. History will remember. Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6.”
The January date is a reference to a third large rally in the nation’s capital being planned by Americans on Trump’s behalf since the facts of the stolen election became apparent.
Also on December 26, Trump tweeted about the very different and activist role that Democrats would take if one of their own faced the same situation as he: “If a Democrat Presidential Candidate had an Election Rigged & Stolen, with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democrat Senators would consider it an act of war, and fight to the death. Mitch (McConnell) & the Republicans do NOTHING, just want to let it pass. NO FIGHT!”
Northern California conservative Catholic commentator Barbara Simpson told The Wanderer on December 27: “It’s interesting to read the varied comments about William Barr’s relationship with Donald Trump and, honestly, none of it makes sense.
“One side criticizes him for being a lackey of the president — that in fact he is attorney general acting as the ‘private lawyer’ of the president,” Simpson said. “The other side criticizes him for acting on his own, against the wishes of the president and upsetting the proper operation of the Department of Justice.
“We are told that Justice staff is furious over Barr’s actions and, on the other hand, that Trump wants him gone because he acted against the best interests of the administration,” she said. “It appears Barr is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, but what is clear is that our Department of Justice is in a terrible mess and the security of the American people is at risk.”
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on December 28: “There is a cycle with Trump’s appointments where Trump’s supporters love them when they are appointed, love them even more as they begin their job, then, at the end, declare them to be utter failures because they feel let down by something.
“It is as though the conservative base has surrendered its own opinions to Trump’s, or that their opinion is based almost exclusively on how these various appointees treat the president, as opposed to how they do the job,” Querard said. “The attorney general doesn’t work for the president the way other members of an administration do.
“He is appointed by and largely serves at the pleasure of, but a president can’t tell an A.G. who to investigate or not investigate, as one example,” he said. “So you should grade Barr on the entirety of his work and, based on the total disdain that the left has for him, you can safely conclude that he did a largely solid job.
“The GOP base likes that he blew up the fraud that was the Mueller investigation into Russia, the dossier, etc. Conservatives like that he stepped in when prosecutors were overreaching against Roger Stone and Michael Flynn,” he said. “They like his hiring of (John) Durham and later his promotion of that position to special counsel, so that it will be much more difficult for Democrat partisans to shut down a proper investigation into the Biden family.
“It really was only at the end,” Querard said, “because he wasn’t vocally supporting claims of election fraud, that they suddenly decided that he was a failure and unworthy. A look at his overall record disproves that, as does the fact that he enjoyed the president’s support for virtually his entire time as A.G., as compared to the constant fire Jeff Sessions took as his predecessor.”
On the topic of Barr not disclosing before the November 3 election that Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s foreign deal-making son Hunter long had been under official investigation, Querard said that wouldn’t have made a difference.
“The net effect of Barr not publicizing Hunter Biden being under investigation was essentially zero,” Querard said. “Republicans already knew about the Biden family and their self-serving deals and conflicts of interest, and the media was largely determined to ignore the story and not cover it. Barr saying something wasn’t going to change either of those things, and it would not have impacted the race.”
Arizona attorney Ann Howard told The Wanderer on December 28: “Barr has been in the line of fire from both the left and the right — the right alleging that he has not vigorously defended Trump’s interests, especially in the 2020 presidential election.
“Barr, of course, is to uphold election integrity and prosecute fraud and irregularities regarding federal law,” Howard said. “The process is complex, but basically the DOJ has had in place for decades an ‘Election Day Program’ to accept allegations of federal-law irregularities and fraud.
“Every U.S. Attorney has a person and contact number in each district’s office(s) where on election day people can report violations of law. The FBI offices are also available with a contact person,” she said. “Apparently, only a handful of states had reports of wrongdoing. And, at one point, Barr said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
“Regardless of the above, at one point Barr issued his famous memo to all U.S. Attorneys, informing them that they could ignore a traditional, procedural rule that allowed the lawyers to delay investigation of reported irregularities until after all votes had been certified,” Howard said. “Barr’s memo said they could begin investigating complaints immediately.
“The official in charge of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, immediately resigned in protest,” Howard said. “The deep-state lawyers and Trump-haters objected to Barr’s memo, Trump’s supporters saw Barr’s memo as inadequate, and eventually Barr resigned.
“Hindsight seems to indicate that Barr was hindered by an outdated rule, and by rebellious DOJ entrenched lawyers,” she said. “We cannot ignore, in judging Barr’s actions, his resignation letter praising Trump’s policies and accomplishments. Barr seemed to admire Trump.
“Based on what we are privy to regarding the inside workings of Trump’s administration, perhaps Barr was simply a victim of Trump-hatred and deep-state machinations, just like so many,” she said. “One question needs to be answered, though. Is Trump being adequately informed and served by those around him? We could then judge Barr better. Anybody?”
Barr’s resignation letter, dated December 14, acknowledged that “when the country is so deeply divided, it is incumbent on all levels of government, and all agencies acting within their purview, to do all we can to assure the integrity of elections and promote public confidence in their outcome.” He went on to praise Trump’s record.
“I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people,” Barr said. “Your 2016 victory speech in which you reached out to your opponents and called for working together for the benefit of the American people was immediately met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds.
“The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia,” Barr said. “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country. You built the strongest and most resilient economy in American history — one that has brought unprecedented progress to those previously left out.
“You have restored American military strength. By brokering historic peace deals in the Mideast you have achieved what most thought impossible. You have curbed illegal immigration and enhanced the security of our nation’s borders. You have advanced the rule of law by appointing a record number of judges committed to constitutional principles,” Barr said.
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