A Trump Walks Into A Barr
Or “Pardon Me, Sir”
By
Leonard Zwelling
Ha-ha. You get it, but it’s real. Or is it?
Attorney General William Barr got on national television to
implore President Trump to stop tweeting about Justice Department business as
it was “making it impossible” for him to do his job. Now that’s a joke!
Mr. Barr thinks that his job is to protect the president
from legal actions against him when the president commits crimes. That’s not
his job. The Attorney General is supposed to be the lawyer for the people of
the United States and protect its system of justice. Mr. Barr is doing the
exact opposite, BUT, and this is a huge but, I am not at all sure this is
anything new despite the fact that over 1000 former Justice Department lawyers
have called for the AG’s resignation. Most of this has to do with the AG’s
interference in the work of the line attorneys at DOJ who had recommended a
standard sentence for convicted felon and Trump buddy Roger Stone only to have
the higher ups in the DOJ ask the judge for a lighter sentence post-Tweet. I
agree this is a bad precedent, but is it really so unusual? Not in the politics
that I saw on Capitol Hill when I was there. There was more back scratching
than took place after a romp through poison ivy with senators’ shirts off.
And now, just to be sure that everyone understands what the
game is, Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of some of the most
notorious white-collar criminals of the past twenty years. This includes former
Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, ex-NYC police commissioner Bernard Kerik,
junk bond king Michael Milken, and ex-49ers owner Edward DeBartolo, Jr. (Please
see link above sent by son Richard.)
What America seems not to have grasped is that Mr. Trump was
elected BECAUSE the people were sick of the back scratching and business as
usual of Congress and thought Trump would change that. You know, “drain the
swamp.” Looks like he just let loose more alligators.
I
have no idea why his supporters thought that Trump would change anything, but I
sincerely believe that they did.
Instead,
Trump has taken it to a new level by basically letting a whole lot of bad guys
(and one gal) off. Almost all of these folks were found guilty of some form of
corruption, which, I guess, in Trump’s mind is not a crime, but rather business
as usual. For a guy who stiffs his creditors, I guess it is.
Thus,
what the Dems really have to do to beat Trump is convince everyone that he and
his henchmen have brought nothing new to Washington. They are just more of the
same only at a higher level. It’s a new reality TV show called “Pardon Me”
starring Donald Trump. Instead of “you’re fired” it’s “you’re free.”
Attorney General Barr is clearly a bad guy. He completely
distorted the contents of the Mueller Report before it was released and has
been a shill for Mr. Trump from the beginning of his tenure. He was the AG
Trump hoped Jeff Sessions would have been. But Barr “doth protest too much,
methinks.” His putative reprimand of the Tweeter-in-Chief was simply a CYA
maneuver that was aimed at making him look independent when we all know he’s
going to do what Trump wants him to and that his protest was really a signal to
the boss that the AG has your back.
The media is making it sound as if the Barr actions signal
the end of justice as we know it. Not really. It seems like the continuation of
the same. There is one set of rules for the poor and another for the wealthy.
Trump has just added a two more categories. His friends who get even better
treatment than rich people Trump doesn’t know (are there any?). And guilty
white collar criminals Trump seems to admire or were contestants on his TV show.
It will be up to the judge in the Roger Stone case to mete
out the sentence and she ought to follow the original recommendations of the
line attorneys from the DOJ. If Trump wants to pardon Stone, let him do so and
explain it. My bet is that if he does it will be after the election, but after
this wave of get out of jail free cards, maybe not.
Mr. Trump has the Attorney General he always wanted. Barr is
so despicable that even his former colleagues are turning against him and
asking for his resignation, but Barr will never resign and Congress won’t
impeach him. It is not at all clear that Barr actually broke the law even if he
did not follow precedent. If he did break the law, Congress ought to impeach
him. If he didn’t, then get back to figuring out a way to use Barr’s behavior
against Trump in November. It’s easy. It seems the “new boss is the same as the
old boss,” and that is not at all what the Trumpees voted for in 2016. The
sooner they learn that, the sooner their lives might get better.
And by the way, do you really want Rod Blagojevich back on
the street before his sentence is up? I don’t. He tried to sell a Senate seat.
Let’s face it. Trump does nothing small.
