ernie c: Barr says the Government should not Rightfully investigate possible enemies of the United states but Barr has been known for his misleading evidence and personal opinion for a very long time and should never have been given this position of Power.
Facts: “On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the ‘Black Friday’ market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in ‘unusual secrecy’ and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.”
“Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that ‘summarizes the principal conclusions.’ Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would ‘summarize the principal conclusions’ of the special counsel’s report for the public.”
“When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was ‘particularly egregious.’ Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.”
“When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions.
In an April 10 appearance before the Senate Appropriations Committee, this exchange happened between Barr and Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen:
VAN HOLLEN: Did -- did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?
BARR: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.
Back in 1992, the last time Bill Barr was U.S. attorney general, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in “Iraqgate” and “Iran-Contra.”
As attorney general, Barr—without showing us even a single complete sentence from the Mueller report—decided there are no crimes here. Just keep moving along. Barr’s history of doing just this sort of thing to help Republican presidents in legal crises explains why Trump brought him back in to head the Justice Department.
Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra scandal.
