People Are Trying to Figure Out William Barr. He's Busy Stockpiling Power.

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/09/us/politics/who-is-william-barr.html

People Are Trying to Figure Out William Barr. He’s Busy Stockpiling Power.
Is he the operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report? Or the straight shooter who later disclosed portions that were damaging to President Trump?
By Sharon LaFraniere, Charlie Savage and Katie Benner
June 9, 2019

WASHINGTON — Not long before Attorney General William P. Barr released the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, he strategized with Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, about one of his next moves: investigating the investigators.

Over a dinner of steak, potatoes and carrots in a wood-paneled conference room off Mr. Barr’s Justice Department office, the two discussed their shared suspicions that the officials who initially investigated the Trump campaign’s links to Russia had abused their powers.

They strongly agreed, Mr. Graham said, that “maybe one of the most important things we’ll ever do is clean up this mess.”

Less than two months later, Mr. Barr began his cleanup with the most powerful of brooms: a presidential order commanding intelligence agencies to cooperate with his inquiry, and sweeping power to declassify and make public their secrets — even if they objected.

The move illustrates Mr. Barr’s swift rise in the pantheon of President Trump’s most prominent and loyal allies — and in the eyes of Mr. Trump himself. In a cabinet stocked with government neophytes and placeholders, the deeply experienced Mr. Barr is quickly emerging as the most influential figure in the second half of Mr. Trump’s term.

“He is the closest thing we have to Dick Cheney,” said Charles J. Cooper, a former senior Justice Department official, referring to President George W. Bush’s unusually powerful vice president. “He is a strong-willed man with a forceful personality” and “well-formed, deeply studied views.”

[Skittles]

1. just what we need, another fucking Dick Cheney

[calimary]

5. Yeah. No shit.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. He is also Opus dei....

for reference, I did a couple posts about their involvement in trump's reign.

Here's the most recent:

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100212130384

[Kurt V.]

2. thank you for this important post. the consolidation of power is being under reported. imo

[Golden Raisin]

3. Trump's unofficial personal lawyer/fixer

is now running Department of Justice. Seriously scary scenario.

[Grasswire2]

4. which is why it is SO DANGEROUS TO WAIT to stop them.

Every day they are garnering more power.

We can't wait for 2020.

We can't assume fair elections.

Hair on fire!

[Skittles]

7. THANK YOU

[JHB]

6. He's a "Movement Conservative" operative working to consolidate their hold on the government

Trump was always a tool to them. The most obvious manifestation was his granting them their wish-list of federal judges. But Barr and other blocking of anything that could damage the Republican brand is part of the same package.

[DallasNE]

9. "Well Informed, Deeply Studied"

What is a load of crap. He never cites case law when he hands down an opinion. Anybody can claim a privilege but that doesn't make it so - well informed, deeply studied my eye. This sounds like someone tooting their own horn. And nobody challenges him on anything. For instance, when he claimed that Mueller applied the wrong statute and he applied the correct statutes. Nobody ever pushed him on which statutes Mueller applied that were wrong and why nor which statutes he replaced them with and why. No - just another free pass and an MSM in the hip pocket of Trump and his Republican allies.