Bill Barr

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week it’s yet another indictment for former president Donald Trump, this time over argle-bargle about the 2020 election which violated the laws of truth-telling that apparently only matter when Republicans do them. Let’s be clear: Donald Trump lied about 2020 — and he lied a lot. But Democrats lied about 2016, about 2004, about 2000, all at rates that were just as high but didn’t result in riotousness. The Department of Justice and the Joe Biden team at the White House seem confident that this is the path to go down to ensure re-election next fall. But we’ve seen this dangerous game played out before — and in 2016 it had shocking results.

For all the caterwauling on the left about one William P. Barr, he hasn’t really delivered for Donald Trump, apart from performing some fancy footwork on the release of the Mueller report. The latest affront arrived today when Barr declared that he has discovered nary a shred of evidence of voter fraud. Presumably, Barr searched high and low, like one of those fanatics you see using wearing headphones and deploying metal detectors to sweep a grassy era for precious metals or valuables. But he arrived at the conclusion that 'to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election’.To be sure, Barr was careful to specify 'to date’, suggesting that perhaps something might yet emerged.

Two broad camps divide American conservatism today: those who get it, and those who don’t — the woke and unwoke, if I may borrow a lefty term but give it a slightly different meaning. For the right to have any shot at taming liberalism’s raging furies, woke conservatives must remain ascendant and consolidate the movement. President Trump was among the first to get it, in his own intuitive, messy way. The ambitious Missouri senator Josh Hawley is likewise woke. So are Attorney General Bill Barr and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. But too many credentialed conservatives don’t get it. What’s the it conservatives need to get?

Attorney General William Barr’s seemingly interminable testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday demonstrated two things. First, AG Barr is the most patient and unflappable man in Alpha Centauri. Second, his would-be inquisitors in the Democratic party have succumbed to a virus far more toxic than the Wuhan flu. Political epidemiologists who identify the virus as Trump Derangement Syndrome are not quite right in their diagnosis. To be sure, TDS is a common comorbidity that renders this new infection more virulent and debilitating. But the nervous disorder on view yesterday, while it presupposes tertiary Trump Derangement Syndrome, is actually distinct from that malady. I am not sure that public health officials have yet settled on a name for the sickness.

In the beginning there was a clandestine ‘surveillance’ and ‘unmasking’ program by operatives in the Obama executive branch, targeting figures in some way related to President-Elect Trump during his 75-day transition period. But on January 5, 2017 the outgoing Obama administration took a fateful step. Obama convened a meeting in the Oval Office; present were his VP, the Deputy AG, his National Security Adviser, the heads of the FBI and CIA and perhaps one or two others. A decision was taken to open a counter-terrorism investigation. The target: the incoming president, Trump. The FBI chief, Comey, was dispatched the next day to brief Trump about an ongoing investigation, but hide from him that he was the target.

You have to hand it to the New York Times. They certainly know how to spin a story. Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr answered some questions about the ongoing criminal investigation into the so-called 'Russian collusion’ inquiry conducted by Robert Mueller and other people in the FBI and the Obama administration. He did not expect, he said, 'based on the information I have today,' that either President Obama or Vice President Biden would be the subject of a criminal investigation. 'Our concern over potential criminality,' he continued, 'is focused on others.’ Perhaps that acknowledgment would be grounds for sighs of relief from Martha’s Vineyard and wherever Joe Biden’s basement is.

The communications teams at the State Department and Department of Justice spent the past couple of days trying to correct their record after the respective heads of their agencies were taken out of context by two Sunday news programs. CBS's 60 Minutes and NBC's Meet the Press both used deceptive editing to smear their subjects in a banner weekend for media bias. Attorney General Bill Barr was the first to get clipped on Meet the Press. Anchor Chuck Todd claimed that Barr would not defend the DoJ's decision to drop charges against former Trump campaign official Michael Flynn based on a shortened version of an answer he gave about the topic to CBS News's Catherine Herridge. Herridge asked Barr, 'When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?

Roger Stone was well-turned out for his sentencing in a Washington courthouse, sporting a blue overcoat with a dark velvet collar and a black Homburg that was first popularized by the British prime minister Anthony Eden. Two rows of supporters showed up in the courtroom to cheer him on. My guess is that he was delighted by the 40-month sentence and $20,000 fine handed down by Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Now Stone gets to emulate his heroes in the Nixon administration such as G. Gordon Liddy, who served time in the hoosegow and were able to demonstrate their loyalty to the boss. Going to jail would be one of the best things ever to happen to Stone. It would be the capstone to his self-mythologization as an adversary of the liberal elite.

Here we go again. Another Trump nominee bites the dust. This time it is Rep. John Ratcliffe, who tried to pass himself off as a seasoned practitioner in the secret world of intelligence. It turned out that the dour Texan didn’t even show for meetings of the House Intelligence Committee he served on, let alone prosecute any terrorists, as he claimed on his résumé. If there was ever a case of all hat and no cattle, Ratcliffe is it.True to form, Trump himself put out a lachrymose message on Twitter, bemoaning the hostility of the news media to his favored pick. Trump babbled, 'Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media.