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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Breaking: Bill ‘Ever Lower’ Barr Was All In With TFG’s Obstruction of Justice

Breaking: Bill ‘Ever Lower’ Barr Was All In With TFG’s Obstruction of Justice

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38Comments

  1. 1.

    Spanky

    I know we’re all shocked by this shocking news.

    Is it too much to ask if Barr can go to jail for this  or whatever this leads to? I’m thinking not.

  2. 2.

    japa21

    There are times when I read a “breaking story” and go “Well, DUH!”  Like, man, who didn’t know this?

  3. 3.

    Spanky

    Also re emptywheel’s statement about Barr “rolling” journalists:

    No one was fooled. They all fell obediently into line, just like their paymasters wanted.

  4. 4.

    RepubAnon

    One wonders whether “accessory after the fact to obstruction of justice” could get Bill Barr dis-barred…

  5. 5.

    lowtechcyclist

    Lock them up.  (After indictment, trial, and conviction, of course.)

    ‘Them’ who? Sounds like there’s plenty of obstruction of justice to go around. Certainly Trump and Barr, for starters.

    AG Garland’s going to have to hire a bunch more staff.

  6. 6.

    Dan B

    @Spanky: I await what attorney Jackals have to say.  Since this testimony is two years old it is not “News”.  But it grounds the newly public memo in a trail of deception and failure to follow the oath of office.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    Russia interfering in the 2016 election would be huge.  Is it still possible to investigate and prosecute?

  8. 8.

    HumboldtBlue

    At this point, I think it’s fair to say the Trump administration was not only the most criminal regime this nation has endured, it was also a regime used by foreign actors to negatively impact our country. Trump is the greatest traitor we have ever seen.

    Oh, and DougJ is hitting balls clean out of the park.

    From the archives | But if President Lincoln were to free the slaves—a preposterous idea—how would that be fair to slaves who risked life and limb to escape or who actually bought their emancipation the old-fashioned way: through hard work?

    The Editorial Board, 1863

  11. 11.

    Scout211

    Marcy Wheeler putting into context all the investigations that the DOJ had to drop to be able to continue to protect Trump is beyond appalling.

    It brings to mind the video of Barr being interviewed by the J6 committee and his arrogance throughout that interview.  So NOW you are against crime, former AG Barr? Disgusting.

  12. 12.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Bill Barr is just the fixer and mouthpiece. Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society are the actual evil society, right out of central casting. And it’s all happening right now.

  14. 14.

    Gravenstone

    A reminder that Barr directed the strategic pardons that shielded Bush the elder from the Iran Contra fallout. He’s always been a toady whose professional and personal goal has been furthering Republican power. And sometimes that means quashing threats to that power, even if self inflicted by the idiots having to be protected.

  15. 15.

    patrick II

    I guess people could defend Garland for refusing to publish the memo before being ordered to by a court in the name of institutional integrity.  But I’m not.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    We have known this, even if we didn’t know the particulars.  Barr was hired to protect TFG and that’s what he did.  His obsequious 20 page letter to the DOJ effectively applying for the AG job and trashing Mueller’s investigation is proof of that.

    That clip with MVP is great.  Kamala had his number, but the DC press corpse didn’t care.

    In an ideal world, Barr would be serving time with the rest of them for obstruction, lying to Congress, and all the rest.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    eclare

    @HumboldtBlue:   Oh my, that is good.  I graduated from college several decades ago with around 10k of debt.  I think helping kids get a start in life financially is a positive thing.

  21. 21.

    James E Powell

    @eclare:

    I’m similar. My law school debt was $15K. I did not need to borrow money to pay for my undergraduate degree at the publicly funded state university now know as The Ohio State University. We really need to return to that world.

  22. 22.

    p.a.

    Will this even cause a stutter in the Bill Barr rehab tour?  A ding in his book sales/deal?  Downturn in cocktail party invites?

    Let’s at least hope he’ll get some shit on his restaurant jaunts.

    Fucker

  23. 23.

    Barbara

    @eclare: Yes, the utilitarian or perhaps cynical view is that erasing student debt will free now-working adults to assume other kinds of socially approved debts, like for cars and houses.  In other words, there will be quite a few beneficiaries in addition to the debt holders themselves.  This is the theory behind U.S. bankruptcy laws, which are quite a bit more redemptive than what are found in other countries.  You should be free to shed unproductive debt under certain circumstances.  Which is also why holding student loans to an infinitely harsher standard of non-forgiveness is so wrong.​

  24. 24.

    Ken

    @Spanky: Is it too much to ask if Barr can go to jail for this  or whatever this leads to?

    Maybe, but I think a strict reading of this memo, together with Barr’s other output, indicates that the President can have Barr imprisoned at an undisclosed location, block any attempt to investigate his fate, and be completely immune to any investigation or prosecution for his actions.

  25. 25.

    Suzanne

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Trump is the greatest traitor we have ever seen. 

    TRUFACTS.
    His legions of sycophants are almost as bad, and they deserve to be rejected from society.

  27. 27.

    StringOnAStick

    @patrick II:  I think Garland played this the way he did so that the court ruling would force the release; if he’d done it without it then the screaming that he released it for political reasons would have been good for several news cycles.  Note that he could have asked for an appeal of the decision forcing the release, and he directed the DOJ to not appeal.  Now the focus is on the report, not on Garland playing politics by releasing it on his own, because you know the Villagers would have all spent hours on their fainting couches if he had.  The timing is great too, coming right on the heels of the classified documents issue hitting the news.

  28. 28.

    Captain C

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Bill Barr is just the fixer and mouthpiece.

    @Gravenstone:

    A reminder that Barr directed the strategic pardons that shielded Bush the elder from the Iran Contra fallout. He’s always been a toady whose professional and personal goal has been furthering Republican power.

    Barr is a coverup artist in the service of the Republican Party and its funders and controllers, and always has been.

  29. 29.

    eclare

    @James E Powell:   For my first two years of college, I went to a private college.  Most of the debt was from that.  I transferred my junior year to the University of Tennessee.  I don’t remember what my tuition was, but my family could afford it, so it couldn’t have been much.

  30. 30.

    patrick II

    @StringOnAStick:

    Excellent points.  I suppose after a year and a half I am just awfully tired of Barr joining with Comey’s self-righteous “man of principle” smugness.

  31. 31.

    prostratedragon

    @patrick II:  With all the ducks to be lined up, he might have had more practical reasons to use the delay, including wanting something that defused the charge of acting politically.  The weakness of caterwauling this last week suggests that that’s happened.

    I don’t think we yet know how big is this whale we’re standing on.

  32. 32.

    catclub

    @patrick II: ​
    &nbsp

    ;I guess people could defend Garland for refusing to publish the memo before being ordered to by a court in the name of institutional integrity. But I’m not.

    Does this mean that the Mueller report has still never been released in complete form? And this release of the memo is just a sub-case of the release of the Mueller report?

  34. 34.

    jonas

    @japa21: ​
      To be honest, most Americans. As Marcy Wheeler points out, this was one of the most egregious derelictions of duty by the DC press corps during the Trump years. Harris had him dead to rights with her question about whether they had actually evaluated any of the underlying evidence Mueller had assembled. No, they just said it was no biggie and left it at that and the press reported it as such. The vast majority of Americans think the whole thing was a big nothingburger. Mission accomplished.

  35. 35.

    jonas

    @catclub: ​
      I don’t believe a fully unredacted version of the Mueller report has been released, and probably won’t be for a long time. Trump tweeted a bunch of times that he had “declassified” everything about it but, of course, as he’s learning now, that’s not how it works.

  36. 36.

    BruceFromOhio

    I apologize that I cannot contain my disgust with which the DOJ press corps protected Bill Barr from criticism. But holy shit did that man roll a whole bunch of people playing journalists on the TV.

    I do not apologize. My disgust is open to all. ‘playing journalists’ seems to be a source of many problems as well.

  37. 37.

    Jim Appleton

    @prostratedragon:

    I don’t think we yet know how big is this whale we’re standing on.

    OK, I’ll join the endless parade of, “this should be a rotating tagline.”  (TSBART?)

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