William Barr

President Donald Trump has ruffled yet more feathers in the past two weeks by serving up his opinions on the Justice Department and the Supreme Court. The president’s critics say his actions are an assault on democratic institutions and a tipping of the scales of justice. His allies argue that the president has every right to express his discontent with elements of the judicial system after the farce of the last three years.  Trump kicked off his feud with the DoJ by weighing on federal prosecutors’ recommended seven-to-nine-year sentence for political consultant Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

Inquiring minds want to know, what will Justin Amash — wait, who? JUSTIN AMASH, you know, he’s the US Representative from Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. He’s a bona-fide Trump-hating Republican. Waaaay back in 2016, he joined the lemming list of Republicans who opposed the nomination of Donald Trump. Some individuals who had signed onto that list — Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example — have had second thoughts and now support the President. But not Justin Amash. No siree Bob. His motto is ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ In case you doubt this, consider his recent Twitter emission, which is a series of variations on a theme announced at the beginning of his Twitter thread. 1.

Did House Democrats actually want Attorney General William Barr to show for Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing? No chance. The Committee knew at latest Sunday that Barr did not plan to appear under the additional strictures Democrats had decided to impose on a typical House hearing. They could have sent a subpoena. Instead, they waited for Thursday to advance the #ChickenBarr narrative and assert that the Attorney General is somehow evading the withering interrogation Democrats had planned. Democrats hoped a Barr questioning would provide their dozens of presidential contenders with viral YouTube moments.

William Barr took paternity of the Mueller report during his testimony before Congress today, declaring ‘It’s my baby.’ All that was missing was him breaking out into song, ‘I’ll say yes, sir, that’s my baby/No sir, I don’t mean maybe/Yes sir, that’s my baby now.’ Indeed it is.Barr may be Attorney General, but there was no Solomonic splitting of the baby. Barr fought a battle with an invisible Robert Mueller for possession, claiming that his old pal’s letter to him complaining about ‘public confusion’ as a result of the rollout of the report was, in fact, ‘snitty.

Since the release of the Mueller report, with each passing day comes a new and increasingly strident demand to impeach Donald Trump. The New York Times, Washington Post, and various prestige magazines are cluttered with such demands, casting impeachment as an imperative for the survival of American democracy. Mueller might have affirmatively concluded that no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia ever came close to being established, but that hasn’t stopped Democrats and their journalist allies from barreling full-steam ahead down this rabbit hole.

Thursday, and press report And one clear call for me. And may there be no moaning of the Barr When we set out to see. —Apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson OK, Possums, here it is in redact and white (drum roll, please): The Mueller Report, 448 color-coded pages, replete with almost 900 redactions. Who says the government isn’t effective at education: over the last months it expanded the vocabulary of many Americans by putting that nice word into general circulation. So quickly was the report edited and rushed into print that the Surgeon General’s warning against operating heavy machinery while or shortly after dosing up on the report was omitted. So let me supply the defect and warn you: the report is boring.

President Trump isn’t supposed to be watching television at 9:30 am tomorrow. The White House has scheduled him to attend events that are supposed to make him look above the fray. But that’s also when Attorney General William P. Barr will take a breather from targeting asylum seekers and hold a press conference on Thursday morning to discuss the release of the Mueller report.If his previous performances are anything to go by, Barr’s comments will be directed directly at Trump in another bid to curry favor with him. Meanwhile, Trump himself is saying that he may conduct his own press conference: ‘Maybe I’ll do one after that, we’ll see.

‘OBAMA TAPPED MY PHONES!’ When President Trump blared out this accusation in a series of tweets in March 2017, the White House cited one of my stories for the BBC as evidence. The president’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, also mentioned reports from the New York Times and Fox and one written by Louise Mensch, a former British MP. In the days that followed, the White House could produce nothing more than this handful of media reports to justify the president’s claim of a grave abuse of power by his predecessor. This was extraordinary, given that Trump now sat atop the federal government.

William Barr flinched for a nanosecond, then plunged into the murky waters of the deep state. There was ‘spying,’ he ventured, in 2016 – against the Trump campaign. There was no ‘specific evidence,’ but he’s persuaded it happened. In that moment before the Senate, Barr betrothed himself to Donald Trump. Only moments earlier Trump had gone on a prolonged tirade about the malefactions of ‘dirty cops’ who had engaged in ‘treasonous’ activities against him and his aides. Trump, you could say, is on a roll these days. His chum Benjamin Netanyahu just won re-election, partly thanks to a series of boosts from Trump. He may be heading towards a trade deal with China.

According to Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller investigation: Russia did try to interfere in the election, hacked the Democrats’ emails, and released materials through WikiLeaks No coordination or collusion between Trump campaign and Russians Mueller offers no conclusion about obstruction of justice Barr concludes that no charges of obstruction are warranted under DOJ rules because there was no underlying crime to obstruct Full transparency of Mueller report conflicts with rules of rules of federal criminal procedure, which make Grand Jury proceedings secret Here are the essential quotes from Barr’s letter.

1. Barr will be confirmed Republicans hold a 53-seat majority in the US Senate. Nothing that emerged in William Barr’s Senate hearing came close to losing him the four GOP votes that would put his confirmation in jeopardy. Remember, all but one Republican senator voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for a lifetime position on the Supreme Court despite a credible allegation of sexual assault and serious charges that Kavanaugh had lied in his responses. 2. Don’t believe a word Barr said I am only being half facetious here. Of course, we can learn something from nominees’ testimony in confirmation hearings.