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How Bill Barr Turned the Justice Department Into a Cover-up Operation for Trump
The Trump-Ukraine scandal is only the latest in a long line of cover-ups linked to the attorney general.
<snip>
"Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people," said Justin Amash, the then-Republican congressman from Michigan who has since left the party. "This will continue if those who have read the [Mueller] report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth."
Barr has also been untroubled by Trump's penchant for calling for investigations of his perceived enemies—a favorite subject of a famously paranoid president.
<snip>
His tenure has been disastrous for other reasons, too: Barr announced that the government would resume executions of federal death row inmates, ending a de facto 16-year moratorium on the practice. He declined to charge the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner in 2014, overruling the recommendation of lawyers within his own Civil Rights Division. He has played a key role in the White House's efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a calculated move that would systematically undercount immigrants and deprive their communities of federal resources for the next decade.
But this willingness to ignore the rule of law in order to expand his president's power is the most persistent—and most consequential—theme of Barr's tenure.
<snip>
Barr, however, views the powers of his office as a political prize to be won, and uses those powers to protect the administration's friends and attack its enemies with impunity. As Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin put it, although Trump's conduct in the Ukraine scandal is the "primary offense," Barr's "prostitution of the Department of Justice for the president’s political agenda has been necessary to the president’s schemes." Trump is a lawless person, but it is Barr's quiet willingness to work the system on Trump's behalf that allows this lawlessness to flourish. - GQ
<snip>
"Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people," said Justin Amash, the then-Republican congressman from Michigan who has since left the party. "This will continue if those who have read the [Mueller] report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth."
Barr has also been untroubled by Trump's penchant for calling for investigations of his perceived enemies—a favorite subject of a famously paranoid president.
<snip>
His tenure has been disastrous for other reasons, too: Barr announced that the government would resume executions of federal death row inmates, ending a de facto 16-year moratorium on the practice. He declined to charge the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner in 2014, overruling the recommendation of lawyers within his own Civil Rights Division. He has played a key role in the White House's efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a calculated move that would systematically undercount immigrants and deprive their communities of federal resources for the next decade.
But this willingness to ignore the rule of law in order to expand his president's power is the most persistent—and most consequential—theme of Barr's tenure.
<snip>
Barr, however, views the powers of his office as a political prize to be won, and uses those powers to protect the administration's friends and attack its enemies with impunity. As Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin put it, although Trump's conduct in the Ukraine scandal is the "primary offense," Barr's "prostitution of the Department of Justice for the president’s political agenda has been necessary to the president’s schemes." Trump is a lawless person, but it is Barr's quiet willingness to work the system on Trump's behalf that allows this lawlessness to flourish. - GQ
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