13

Just like it’s not hard to see why Trump chose Matt Whittaker to be his ‘acting AG’ and Kavanaugh for SJC-Whittaker because of what he’d said about the Mueller investigation and Russia in the past, Kavanaugh because he thinks the President-so long as it’s a Republican-is above the law-so it’s not hard to see why he chose William Bar to be his permanent AG. This week Barr’s Senate confirmation will begin and there’s a great deal he must be grilled on.

Just like with Whittaker Trump’s co-conspirators advocating for Barr abstract everything except his technical qualifications; Whittaker’s qualifications are actually much less but in any case it’s insisted that somehow we shouldn’t be worried at all that Whittaker had called the Russia investigation a ‘witch hunt’ back in 2017-and indeed, he’d told friends his expressed purpose in calling it a witch hunt was to get the positive attention of ‘President Trump’-clearly it worked. Supposedly Whittaker could totally turn off his own preferences once he actually was in the position to oversee the investigation he’d previously called a hoax on multiple occasions.

Similarly with Barr we’re supposed to only worry about the way his qualifications look on his resume-not the comments he’s made about the Mueller probe. The Dems plan to question him about what he’s previously said about the Mueller probe-that’s it’s fatally misconceived. The stakes couldn’t be more serious especially with the news that Rod Rosenstein-who appointed Mueller and has protected the probe-will be leaving-it’s believed but not known for a fact that he won’t leave until after Mueller is done.

“As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for hearings on William Barr’s nomination for attorney general, one person will loom large in the room: special counsel Robert Mueller.”

“Several Senate Democrats on the committee plan to grill Barr at his confirmation hearing next week on his views on Mueller’s Russia investigation, focusing on a controversial memo Barr wrote last year to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In that memo, Barr criticized Mueller’s investigation into possible obstruction of justice as “fatally misconceived.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday said Barr should be disqualified from leading the DOJ in part because of the memo.

“The memorandum is deeply worrisome because in effect he says the president is above the law... that’s incorrect as a matter of law but certainly for an attorney general to have that position is deeply wrong,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who said he’ll ask Barr if he’ll stop political interference into the special counsel’s probe.

“He added that Barr should recuse himself from overseeing the investigation if he can’t provide an “ironclad” commitment to protecting Mueller and declines to disavow statements he made in the memo.”

Again, Barr’d defenders are making the argument that while he argued in a letter to Rosenstein while the latter was overseeing the Russia probe that the probe was ‘fatally misconceived’ now that he himself will be overseeing it he’ll no longer believe that. Supposedly those who oppose the Mueller probe all magically stop opposing it once they’re in the position to do something about it. I get it that this is how the system is supposed to work-that someone appointed AG should put their own ideology aside and it works in many cases but clearly Trump appointed them in the hope they won’t put ideology aside, that they will be his Roy Cohn. 

After all he fired Sessions for recusing himself and not protecting him. So Trump obviously at least believes that William Barr will both not recuse-as Whittaker hasn’t-and hopefully also protect him from the probe-there are many ways to do this short of firing Mueller which is why that’s very unlikely to happen.

When the Dems ask him about ‘fatally misconceived’ they also need to ask him about a few other things that in a way are even more relevant. While no doubt some will attempt to dismiss his previously expressed opinion on the Mueller probe, it’s even worse than that as we have a record of what he’s previously done in the same position.

There’s been a good deal of commentary on the pardon power and wether Trump will try at some point to pardon himself out of this mess. But in any case do you think it conceivable that Trump chose Barr without being aware that he pardoned Casper Weinberger and five other Iran-Contra co-conspirators at a particularly helpful time for George Bush Sr? While we can speculate wether or not Trump will attempt to use the pardon power, Barr actually used it to Bush Sr’s benefit at the height of the 1992 election. 

“When senators get to grill William Barr next week, they shouldn’t waste much time on whether President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general would fire special counsel Robert Mueller.”

“It’s probably true that Barr won’t try to fire Mueller outright; regarding Mueller lately narrative coming from Rudy Giuliani and friends is that they’re going to prevent Mueller’s report from becoming public or ‘proofread’ or ‘edit’ it first.”

“The key question should be something different: Under what circumstances would Barr advise the president to pardon the targets of Mueller’s investigation?”

Because Barr’s been here before.

Here’s why: The most significant single act of Barr’s career in the Department of Justice was to advise President George H.W. Bush to pardon six officials from Ronald Reagan’s administration, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for crimes associated with the Iran-Contra affair. At the time, Barr was — you guessed it — attorney general. His recommendation gave Bush the cover he needed to issue the pardons.

This was what Barr did the last time he was AG. An action that he subsequently boasted of-he was not at all ‘queasy’ about it, a la James Comey, rather he was proud of it.

“And Bush needed the cover. The investigation led by independent prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was closing in on the president himself. Walsh had demanded that Bush turn over a campaign diary that he kept in 1986. Bush failed to do so, presumably because the diary showed he knew more about Iran-Contra than he had let on. Walsh publicly condemned Bush’s failure to produce the diary as “misconduct” by the sitting president.”

Issuing the pardons killed Walsh’s investigation — and saved Bush. When the targets of the investigation were off the hook, Walsh had no leverage to continue.

“Don’t take my word for it. When the pardons came, Walsh went on ABC’s “Nightline” and said that Bush had “succeeded in a sort of Saturday Night Massacre.” The comparison was intended. Walsh was saying that Bush had saved himself by effectively ending an investigation that was leading to the Oval Office — the aim that Nixon failed to accomplish when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.”

“Leaving little to the imagination, Walsh also said at the time that he had “evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

“The architect of this pardon strategy was Barr. In an oral history interview he gave in 2001, Barr said he didn’t consult with the pardon office at his own Department of Justice, which was playing its “usual role — naysayers” against issuing pardons.”

“Instead, Barr said he spoke to “some seasoned professionals” at Justice. Then, “based on those discussions, I went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others.”

So in his telling it was Barr himself that told Bush Sr. not to stop with Weinberger but five others besides. So what advice will he have for ‘President Trump?’

For example, Barr said that as attorney general, he “suggested some standards of my own” with respect to who should be pardoned. According to Barr, he “said that they should look at the little people,” meaning anyone who was taking orders in the scandal.

Weinberger as Bush’s Secretary of Defense, was not exactly a ‘little person.’

And Barr added in the interview that “He wrote a little note saying, ‘Look at the little people, not just the people with influence.’”

“If there really existed such a “note” on when pardons are appropriate, written by the attorney general who advised and gave cover to the Iran-Contra pardons, the Senate should demand to see it.”

“The senators should also ask Barr what his views are right now about pardons.”

“The senators should ask whether Barr would recommend that Trump issue pardons, and when. They shouldn’t let the nominee avoid answering. There’s no legal reason he couldn’t speak about a pardon recommendation, and no executive privilege for advice not yet given.”

“All this background about Barr and pardons is so important because it’s a lesson for Trump on how he can address the Mueller investigation.”

“Firing Mueller would be politically foolish. It would lead the public to invoke Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre firing of Cox. And it would invite charges of obstruction of justice and even impeachment.”

“But pardons, skillfully applied, might be able to thwart Mueller’s investigation without paying the same political price. For example, Barr could recommend pardons for everyone targeted by Mueller, then shut down the investigation by saying there was no one left to investigate or prosecute. Barr knows that — because Bush followed his advice, and got away with his own investigation-ending maneuver.”

“Barr could give Trump the same cover that he gave Bush. If Trump can say that the attorney general recommended the pardons, it would help shield him from the charge that he is issuing pardons to save himself.”

“And Barr could talk about the value of pardoning the “little guys,” as he did in discussing his recommendations to Bush.”

Is Paul Manafort a ‘little guy?’ Trump called George Papadopoulos a ‘Coffee Boy’ so does that qualify?

But as if this weren’t more than enough to give you major reservations and concerns over Barr there’s more.

Barr was involved in still more political dirty tricks by Bush Sr. Indeed, I wrote about Sr’s role in not just Iran-Contra-but the possibly larger scandal of Iran collusion in 1980 in Chapter A. Alan Dershowitz cites Bush pardoning Weinberger as evidence Trump can pardon whomever he wants. I would argue for a different reading-that the media chose to give Bush cover as by then they’d decided they were tired of Iran-Contra and Sr paid little political price. Obviously the politics are very different for Trump in 2019-2020 than for Bush in 1992-1992 as the media is mercifully treating Russiagate much more seriously.

As I noted in Chapter A, I understand that in the immediate aftermath of Bush’s passing away, many want to say nice things about him if for no other reason than the contrast with the current GOP ‘President.’  But in a way Dershowitz is right as Bush is a great example of how to use the awesome power of the Executive and the DOJ to protect oneself from an investigation while using this awesome machinery to persecute your political enemies.

It’s a real cautionary tale as as Dershowitz is always pointing out, there was no political price paid in what Bush Sr and William Barr did.

Because Bush Sr did more than pardon the Iran-Contra co-conspirators to-in Trump’s words relieving him of great pressure he actively used the power of the DOJ to pursue a fake scandal on Bill Clinton-call it the real Whitewater scandal. 

“The final report on the Whitewater investigation released Wednesday by the Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) confirmed what had been known for some time — that after all the tens of millions of dollars and eight years of investigation, the OIC found no evidence of any criminal activity on the part of Bill or Hillary Clinton in the various dealings that fell under the catchall heading of “Whitewater.”

Parenthetically, it’s outrageous the way the media continues to shower Ken Starr with reverent treatment 20 years after the fact with all that we have subsequently learned. He continues to express great self righteousness over Clinton’s alleged obstruction while at the same time insisting that “President Trump’ is likely guilty of nothing. The media still hasn’t picked up on the fact that Starr-just like Brett Kavanaugh who wrote the questions Clinton answered that were indeed intended as a ‘perjury trap’-is not some giant of the law but just another glorified GOP hack-how else do you explain his totally different standard for Trump?

When the GOP talks about a ‘fishing expedition’ or a ‘perjury trap’  they are, as usual, engaged in rank projection. This is what they did in the 1990s. And we haven’t even gotten into the way Starr allegedly so outraged over Clinton having an affair with an intern totally looked the other way as Chancellor at Baylor regarding the many cases of sexual harassment over there. Indeed, it was more than just looking the other way, he openly used his power to help accused sexual harassers:

A motion filed in federal court this week claims that former Baylor University President Ken Starr and other school officials helped a student they knew had been accused of sexual harassment.

I guess this student was a Republican.

Back to Salon and the real Whitewater:

.”The highlights of the report — as judged by the headlines of the major national dailies — were Robert Ray’s criticism of President Clinton for disparaging the Starr-Lay investigation, and Ray’s claim of inaccuracies in now-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s testimony about billing records for Madison Guaranty, the failed S&L whose owners, the McDougals, were partners with the Clintons in a real estate company named Whitewater.

Note that Starr seems to think that the simple fact of Clinton publicly criticizing his investigation is proof of obstruction-apparently calling the Russia probe a hoax and witch hunt on a daily basis and accusing Mueller of being a partisan hack with ’17 angry Democrats’ is in no way obstruction. I mean if we’re going to use this standard, the Ken Starr standard where simply disparaging an investigation is obstruction ‘President Trump’ is finished.

Anyway, when this Whitewater report came out in 2002, the media-as per usual, as is typical when dealing with the Clintons-buried the lede:

“But both missed the real shocker in the report: new details of how the scandal was fueled in its early days by the Justice Department of George H. W. Bush, who was facing a daunting election against the upstart governor from Arkansas.”

“While the aim of the report was clearly to defend the integrity of the investigation that produced it, tucked away toward the end is information that points to an opposite conclusion. Critics of the Starr and Ray investigations have long held that the Whitewater probe was partisan from the start, born in dirty tricks and manipulation that began with the first Bush administration. Now the OIC itself is presenting facts that substantiate those claims.”

Again, the GOP projection is jarring-they’ve attempted to foment this counternarrative that Russia is a hoax invented by the Obama Administration when it turns out that in fact Whitewater was a hoax invented by the Bush Sr Administration. Projection-as they know that Whitewater was a hoax of the Bush Administration they accuse the Democrats of engaging in their own treachery.

“According to the report, in the late summer of 1992 a referral file from the Resolution Trust Corp. came before U.S. Attorney Charles A. Banks and local FBI officials in Little Rock, Ark. It was a potential case of check kiting against Jim McDougal, Susan McDougal and Lisa Aunspaugh. It also mentioned Bill and Hillary Clinton as possible witnesses in the case. And as all the players in the drama realized, that made all the difference in the world.”

“The 50-odd pages in this section of the report reveal how political appointees at the highest level of the first Bush administration actually intervened in the normal process of the investigation, not to slow it down but to speed it up — and with the pretty obvious intention of getting the matter before the public prior to Election Day, 1992. This is not the first time this story has been told (it was previously pointed out in “The Hunting of the President,” by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons). But it is the first time it’s been told in such detail, with so much sworn testimony, and from a source that will be difficult for supporters of the OIC to question.”

“From the start, Banks, a former Republican candidate for Congress whom the first President Bush had recently nominated to the federal bench, had misgivings about the quality of the potential case, and he was suspicious about its timing. But there is no evidence, as even the OIC report concedes, that Banks treated the matter in anything but a proper manner.

“Banks was a breath of fresh air-the rare Republican you can point to who puts the rule of law and his own oath of office above petty partisan advantage-the most famous example being, of course, Bob Mueller who has integrity that’s simply impeccable-again as I argue in Chapter B it’s simply inconceivable he’d have done a Comey and allowed Emailgate to be weaponized in a way that rigged the election for Trump.”

Of course, Banks was essentially a voice in the wilderness as the Bush Administration pounced on Whitewater:

“At around the same time, though, people at the highest levels of the Bush administration found out about the Whitewater referral and started in motion a series of actions intended to speed up the handling of it. According to the report, on Sept. 17, 1992, Edie Holiday, the secretary to the Cabinet in the Bush White House, contacted then Attorney General William Barr and — after some awkward back and forth — asked Barr if he “would be aware of a pending matter in Justice (she may have said it was a criminal referral) about a presidential candidate or a family member of a presidential candidate.”

“At around the same time, according to the report, then-White House counsel C. Boyden Gray also apparently took action. He inquired about the status of the referral with the head of the Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC), the agency from which the referral to the U.S. attorney originated.”

“Washington is replete with rules prohibiting or discouraging contact that might create the appearance of a conflict of interest. And most cover inappropriate contact between the political side of the executive branch and the law enforcement side of the executive branch, for obvious reasons. During a later phase in the Whitewater investigation, the general counsel at the Treasury gave White House lawyers a heads up about a possible upcoming indictment of Jim McDougal and possibly President Clinton, which was being reported in an internal RTC newsletter called the “early bird report.” That incident was enough to get several White House officials hauled before a federal grand jury and led to the eventual resignations of White House counsel Bernie Nussbaum and Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman. The series of incidents noted in Wednesday’s Whitewater report are considerably more serious: political appointees trying to use their influence over the executive law enforcement agencies for political gain.”

“And it has former Clinton staffers steamed.”

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” says one legal source close to the former president. “How did anybody at the White House even know about it? It suggests to us clearly that they were using the Justice Department and an investigation to influence the election.” How did Edie Holiday find out about the referral? Or C. Boyden Gray? Why did they try to intervene as they did? What other officials were involved? On all of these questions the report is silent.

“What is clear is that Barr went on to get in touch with Ira Raphaelson, the Justice Department’s special counsel for financial institution fraud, and asked him to find out whether such a referral existed. When Raphaelson didn’t uncover one at first, Barr asked him to try again. From here, the story takes a turn that is either comic or Kafkaesque.”

William Barr was on this-clearly his efforts to find out about Whitewater were much more than perfunctory.

And as we see just what kind of partisan hack he was in 1992, remember that he will be going through confirmation hearings to be Trump’s AG this week.

“Though Barr had no apparent reason to believe that the budding case against the McDougals was being handled inappropriately, he instructed his subordinates at the Department of Justice and the FBI to commence a series of contacts with local officials in Little Rock to make sure the case was being handled appropriately. The OIC Report is replete with self-serving statements from these officials, to the effect that they simply wanted to make sure it was handled neither more quickly nor more slowly than any other similar case. Barr, the report explains, told a subordinate that “he did not want action on it artificially sped up or slowed down — it was to be dealt with on its merits and in the normal course.”

“In the succeeding pages, statements such as these are coupled with actions that clearly belie them. Everything in this case should be handled like every other case, Washington seemed to be telling the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. But after reading the OIC’s recounting, it is virtually impossible to conclude that Barr and his colleagues at Justice were concerned with anything except the possibility that the potential case might not be moving as quickly as it could.”

Then in October, 1992 Banks told them there was really no there there-no basis for indictments or an investigation.

“On Oct. 7, 1992, Banks informed his superiors in Washington that based on his review of the referral he was not inclined to open an investigation or move toward issuing indictments. Justice and FBI officials then met and responded to Banks’ message by ordering him to commence an investigation and report back to them on Oct. 16.”

So add to the fact that the FBI rigged the 2016 election against Clinton that it attempted to rig 1992 against her husband and their fake scandal was used against him as a political cudgel that would eventually lead to his impeachment.

Banks had little doubt about the origins of the sudden urgency to move ahead with the case. “All of a sudden, we had this FBI pressure that something had to be done by October 16th,” he later told the OIC. But Banks and other law enforcement officials in Little Rock held their ground.

“Officials in the Bush Justice Department apparently realized that it wouldn’t do to order local officials to fast-track the case, but they nudged them as much as they could. It reflects well on Banks that he didn’t let his superiors convince him that they knew better than he did. He believed he was being angled into issuing subpoenas in the case before the November election, and later testified that he would have resigned before doing so.”

So it turns out the real Whitewater scandal was what Barr and the rest of the Bushies did.

“There are many passages in the OIC report that beg the question of whether more questions would have been asked if the independent counsel were interested in scrutinizing the behavior of former Bush administration officials rather than people tied to the Clinton administration. Why did the independent counsel choose to investigate possible foot-dragging on the part of U.S. Attorney Banks (who is completely vindicated in the report), when Banks had no reason to help Bill Clinton, and ignore the possibility that inappropriate pressure tactics were employed by Attorney General Barr, when Barr had a vested interest in seeing Clinton lose in November?”

“After Banks refused to pursue the Whitewater investigation, and after Bill Clinton’s election, departing Bush Justice Department officials revealingly lost their sense of urgency about the case. Whitewater ultimately came into full bloom when Clinton requested a special prosecutor to look into it in 1994, following pressure from the media and critics.”

By the way-this was a big mistake by Clinton-he should have listened to his wife especially in light of how politicized the Whitewater canard really was. So it is that Bush was able to kill a legitimate investigation into he and Reagan that could have destroyed the reputations of a great many people in both Republican Administrations while fomenting that fake Whitewater investigation that eventually led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment-all with the cooperation of the media-who treated Whitewater with the seriousness it never gave Iran-Contra much less Iran collusion-and Clinton himself who quashed any further Irangate inquiries in 1993 and actually appointed Ken Starr in 1994.

Which brings us to William Barr’s hearings this week. Talk about first as tragedy and then as farce…

It’s clear Barr intends to say the right things. 

 “President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next attorney general, William Barr, plans to tell Congress this week at his confirmation hearings that Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign should continue unimpeded — and that the public should be informed of the results of that probe.”

“I believe it is vitally important that the special counsel be allowed to complete his investigation,” Barr plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to prepared remarks obtained by NBC News.

“I also believe it is very important that the public and Congress be informed of the results of the Special Counsel’s work. For that reason, my goal will be to provide as much transparency as I can consistent with the law,” Barr plans to say. “I can assure you that, where judgments are to be made by me, I will make those judgments based solely on the law and will let no personal, political or other improper interests influence my decisions.”

His personal political belief, again, is that Mueller’s special counsel investigation was fatally misconceived at the outset. Again, it’s unlikely he directly fires Mueller but there are any numbers of ways he might try to undermine him-like the hope that Trump and friends can somehow simply hide Mueller’s report when he’s done. And the pardon power is a vital line of inquiry-he needs to explain why we shouldn’t see his pardons of the Bushies a case of him making judgments influenced by ‘personal political interests’ and will he also advise Trump as he did Bush Sr?

UPDATE: So yesterday was the first day of questioning and I was less than overwhelmed by the job Senate Dems did. Barr clearly sees his job as being as vague as possible. The Dems pushed him on pledging not to fire Mueller-a pledge he was happy to make, that is to say they were pushing through an open door. The tougher questions were:

1. He refused to categorically say he will release the full Mueller report when it’s concluded. He was very anxious to leave himself wiggle room.