'Trump, Barr and the RULE of Law'
This morning in The New Yorker;In response to:
Trump, Barr, and the Rule of Law
Serving as Trump’s Attorney General—and keeping the job—seems to mean treating anything that does not serve his interests as an urgent threat.
By Margaret Talbot
5:00 A.M.
If there is one thing that Attorney General William Barr’s testimony in the Senate last week made abundantly clear, it’s that he is fine with acting less like the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States and more like the personal lawyer for a tantrum-prone client named Donald Trump. Barr dissembled when answering questions about his handling of the Mueller report, then mischaracterized Robert Mueller’s objections to his spin on it, saying that the special counsel had been primarily troubled by how “the media was playing this.” In fact, Mueller had written, in a letter to Barr, that he was concerned because the Attorney General’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his team’s work.
Barr described that letter as “snitty” and probably written by “staff people,” thereby dismissing
objections that Mueller clearly wanted in the historical record. By the end of the day, Barr had said that he would not come back and testify in the House, as he was scheduled to do. Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, then said that, in misrepresenting Mueller’s discontent, the Attorney General had lied to Congress, which is “a crime.”
Barr is apparently a believer in the “unitary executive” theory, an expansive reading of the powers of the Presidency that’s popular in conservative legal circles. Theory aside, though, serving as Trump’s Attorney General—and keeping the job—seems to mean signing on to the Roy Cohn approach that Trump so admires: treating anything, including the Constitution, that does not serve Trump’s interests as an urgent threat; projecting Trump’s own venal motives onto his critics and opponents; denying and stonewalling.
As a businessman, Trump was notably litigious. In 2016, when he was running for President, USA Today found that he had been involved in thirty-five hundred lawsuits, and was the plaintiff in nearly two thousand of them. That volume of litigation was extraordinary not only for a Presidential candidate but even for a real-estate mogul. As President, he is pursuing a similar strategy—stacking up lawsuits and thwarting investigations in the hope that he can run out the clock before the 2020 election. Last month, he sued the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Representative Elijah Cummings, who had requested some of his financial records from an accounting firm. Then Trump, three of his children, and his private company sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One to prevent them from releasing information about his financial arrangements, which Democrats had subpoenaed. Trump also went to court to try to block a lawsuit brought by two hundred members of Congress, which alleges that his business dealings violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution. And Trump and his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, have so far declined to produce the President’s tax returns for the House Ways and Means Committee, which requested them from the I.R.S. in early April. Since Richard Nixon, it has been the practice for Presidents to release their returns, but, in Mnuchin’s words, Congress is making an “unprecedented” demand—“exposure for the sake of exposure.”
Trump, Barr, and the Rule of Law
Serving as Trump’s Attorney General—and keeping the job—seems to mean treating anything that does not serve his interests as an urgent threat.
By Margaret Talbot
5:00 A.M.
If there is one thing that Attorney General William Barr’s testimony in the Senate last week made abundantly clear, it’s that he is fine with acting less like the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States and more like the personal lawyer for a tantrum-prone client named Donald Trump. Barr dissembled when answering questions about his handling of the Mueller report, then mischaracterized Robert Mueller’s objections to his spin on it, saying that the special counsel had been primarily troubled by how “the media was playing this.” In fact, Mueller had written, in a letter to Barr, that he was concerned because the Attorney General’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his team’s work.
Barr described that letter as “snitty” and probably written by “staff people,” thereby dismissing
objections that Mueller clearly wanted in the historical record. By the end of the day, Barr had said that he would not come back and testify in the House, as he was scheduled to do. Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, then said that, in misrepresenting Mueller’s discontent, the Attorney General had lied to Congress, which is “a crime.”
Barr is apparently a believer in the “unitary executive” theory, an expansive reading of the powers of the Presidency that’s popular in conservative legal circles. Theory aside, though, serving as Trump’s Attorney General—and keeping the job—seems to mean signing on to the Roy Cohn approach that Trump so admires: treating anything, including the Constitution, that does not serve Trump’s interests as an urgent threat; projecting Trump’s own venal motives onto his critics and opponents; denying and stonewalling.
As a businessman, Trump was notably litigious. In 2016, when he was running for President, USA Today found that he had been involved in thirty-five hundred lawsuits, and was the plaintiff in nearly two thousand of them. That volume of litigation was extraordinary not only for a Presidential candidate but even for a real-estate mogul. As President, he is pursuing a similar strategy—stacking up lawsuits and thwarting investigations in the hope that he can run out the clock before the 2020 election. Last month, he sued the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Representative Elijah Cummings, who had requested some of his financial records from an accounting firm. Then Trump, three of his children, and his private company sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One to prevent them from releasing information about his financial arrangements, which Democrats had subpoenaed. Trump also went to court to try to block a lawsuit brought by two hundred members of Congress, which alleges that his business dealings violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution. And Trump and his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, have so far declined to produce the President’s tax returns for the House Ways and Means Committee, which requested them from the I.R.S. in early April. Since Richard Nixon, it has been the practice for Presidents to release their returns, but, in Mnuchin’s words, Congress is making an “unprecedented” demand—“exposure for the sake of exposure.”
(continued in my first comment below)