Less than three months ago, I wrote about Bill Barr, the current U.S. Attorney General, officially the people's litigator, and unofficially Roy Cohn's (and Rudy Giuliani's) replacement as fixer-in-chief on behalf of the Commander-in-Cheat (sorry, Rick Reilly). I denounced his proposal to use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to suspend the Bill of Rights, and argued that his record overall makes a compelling case for making his office subject to direct elections by the voters, as is the case with its state counterparts. I concurred with a former deputy Attorney General that Barr's conduct justified and required his resignation. I did so with the expectation that he would not do so. You can find all of this, and more, here.
I left unsaid the question of whether or not I thought there was any hope that Barr's abhorrent behavior would improve, or would be checked in any way. The answer to that question seemed painfully obvious. But, just in case it wasn't obvious to anyone, recent events have made it painfully clear that the answer is no.
Last weekend began with Barr's botched, comic-opera-level attempt to replace the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor currently investigating several areas of Donald Trump's unsavory life, with a crony who had never prosecuted a case. Gee whiskers, why would he do something like that? Couldn't be for the purpose of undermining the aforementioned investigations, could it?
Well, if you still have some doubts about the answers to those questions, consider the fact that, tomorrow (I write this on Monday evening) two other Justice Department employees, one current, the other former, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about even more Barr-related corruption: the attempt to interfere with the sentencing in the department's case against Roger Stone, and the hijacking of the department's Antitrust Division for political purposes.
The naked corruption of Barr, played out especially as it has in broad daylight, has reached the level of egregiousness at which faculty members of his law school have publicly denounced him. Will that stop him? Of course not.
Only two things can do that.
Option Number One: we wait until next January, and pray that, in the intervening election, his boss loses to Joe Biden, giving Biden and the Democrats (especially if the party controls both houses of Congress) the chance to finally clean up all aspects of the Trump carnage, including what's been done to the Justice Department.
Option Number Two: impeachment.
I can literally hear your eyes rolling, even now. We've been down this road earlier this year, with regard to Barr's boss. And we all know how that turned out: Mitch McCONnell and his Senate "colleagues" did their best I'm-not-listening performance and, with near unanimity, let Trump off the hook. If the House did in fact impeach Barr, there's no reason to expect that the result would be any different.
And, unsurprisingly, the signals on this subject being sent out by some of the key players in the House suggest that, as of now, the consensus among Democrats is that they're not prepared to go through what would admittedly be a study in forgone conclusions. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee that would be in charge of drafting and sending articles of impeachment to the full house, has already signaled that consensus, citing the corruption of Senate Republicans as the basic reason. Just recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially said much the same thing, expressing the view that the question of Barr's corruption, as well as his corruption of the Justice Department, would at this point be best addressed in an election.
Would it?
It's a seductive conclusion, which, in an of itself, is one reason why it should be resisted so vigorously. By not pursuing impeachment proceedings against Barr, the Democrats avoid the dreaded risk of polarizing the electorate, even though the electorate is already as polarized as it can be. It would save them time for passing more legislation that would die a lingering death on McCONnell's desk. It would give them more time to investigate corruption in other agencies of the most corrupt government in the history of the Republic, and allow them to issue subpoenas that, based on their track record to date, they have absolutely no intention of enforcing.
In other words, how much of a real waste of time would it be?
In fact, it would be the exact opposite: it would provide a showcase that would allow House Democrats, witness by witness and question by question, to dismantle the Potemkin illusion of a functioning executive branch and expose it in broad daylight for what it is, a crime syndicate of the first magnitude. It would give them the opportunity to issue massive numbers of subpoenas and then take them to court, asking for decisions on the whole lot of them and using the election as a justification for expedited action by the court. It would create a media narrative that would be impossible to ignore, which in turn would be a campaign asset for Democrats running at every level of government, shaping public and, ultimately, electoral opinion in their favor.
And if, as seems completely likely, the Republican caucus in the Senate wants to walk the plank of perfidy for the sake of "protecting" Barr and Trump, let them. Let them hold the hammer that puts the last nail in their political coffin. Bullies have no other recourse when you show them that you are not afraid of them. In fact, the impeachment process would force not only Senate Republicans to walk that plank but also, by doing so, to follow House Republicans in the process. Judging by recent events, they seem to be more than willing to do so.
Frankly, all of this seems like pretty obvious stuff to me. It should be obvious to people like Pelosi and Nadler, who know far more about national politics and the lay of the D.C. land than I do.
Let's hope that this is one sign that it truly is that obvious, and that they end up doing the right thing. For themselves, and for all of us.
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