Bill Barr Is The Administration's 'Trained Seal'

By Aliza Worthington — May 25, 2019

Kate Bolduan asked reporter Evan Pérez to break down the implications of the Tangerine Tyrant directing his Roy Cohn to conduct an actual witch hunt, going after those who rightly raised alarms about Russian interference into our elections. Pérez explained that one of the ways the Orange Oppressor is accomplishing this degradation of our democracy is to issue an executive order allowing his Roy Cohn (AG Bill Barr) to declassify any material he wants to be able to make public if it helps smear Trump's opponents.

This isn't how they're technically explaining it, of course - they're saying there has to be an investigation into the origins of the Mueller report because they believe the unflattering information about Trump and Russia was ill-gotten. That HE was the one unfairly targeted. Of COURSE he was. Pérez quoted Rep. Adam Schiff's quite appropriate analysis that "while Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies."

Then, Bolduan asked Jack Quinn, former White House counsel to President Bill Clinton, for his take on this new danger into which Trump is willing to place us just to get back at people who dared to hold him accountable for his actions. In addition to explaining that the proper place for looking into wrongdoing within the Justice Department was the Inspector General, the proper person to determine declassification of materials and information was the Director of National Intelligence, Quinn wins the day with the finest description of Bill Barr and his role in TrumpWorld.

QUINN: Well, look. This is really concerning, and it's also very tricky territory for the Democrats as a political matter. But it's important, I think, to start with the understanding that we have an established way of conducting investigations of people's conduct within the Department of Justice. Ordinarily these things are delegated to the Inspector General of the department. That's a relatively independent office within the Department of Justice, one that has a reputation for integrity and thoroughness and competence, and here that has essentially been taken away from the IG, if you will and given to the Attorney General. Additionally, we have a longstanding delegation of power to the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information that had previously been deemed sensitive that might reveal source and methods and the like. Again, the question is why take that person out of the line here? Now, I hate to sound terribly political here, but I think the answer is because with Attorney General Barr, the president can count on getting the answer he wants. From the moment he applied for this job as Attorney General by writing this 19-page memo that was waving his arms saying, "Look over here, look over here! I'll do whatever you need to do to help you get out of these legal problems!" to when he issued this four-page highly misleading, some might say borderline untruthful memorandum supposedly summarizing the Mueller report, Barr has proven himself in my humble opinion as the sort of trained seal of the administration willing to come to any conclusion the president needs.

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