{"id":11793,"date":"2019-04-22T23:26:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T06:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11793"},"modified":"2021-07-26T09:06:15","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T16:06:15","slug":"why-the-effort-to-demonize-attorney-general-barr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-the-effort-to-demonize-attorney-general-barr\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Effort to Demonize Attorney General Barr?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The current progressive effort to demonize attorney general William Barr is creepy, but then again not so strange. He came into the office with singular experience and an excellent reputation from past service. As attorney general, he has followed the law to the letter in handling the release, redactions, and dissemination of the Mueller report. His summaries of the report proved factual. They were not contested by Robert Mueller or his team. His decision not to pursue \u201cobstruction\u201d was not just his own, but logically followed from the Mueller report that did not find enough evidence to make such a positive recommendation. His congressional testimony that there was \u201cspying\u201d during the 2016 campaign is, of course, factually undeniable, and Barr added the qualifier of being interested in finding whether such surveillance was warranted or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for the charge that Barr, a former Bush appointee, is Trump\u2019s \u201chand-picked\u201d choice \u2013how odd, given that&nbsp;<em>all&nbsp;<\/em>attorney generals are presidents\u2019 hand-picked selections. How could they not be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is not as if Barr has referenced himself, in Eric Holder\u2019s partisan fashion, as Trump\u2019s \u201cwing-man.\u201d Nor has he ordered surveillance on, for example, a Fox News reporter, or had the communication records of 20 Associated Press journalists seized, as happened during the Obama administration in efforts to stop leaks of unwelcome news stories. Nor has he been held in contempt of Congress for failure to turn over subpoenaed documents under the cover of a presidential order of executive privilege. There is no suggestion that Barr has abused the perquisites of the office, for example, by using a government jet to go to the horse races with his family. He has avoided controversial value judgements about the nature of the American people and polarizing rhetoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, more likely, the effort to delegitimize the professional Barr is the opening, preemptory salvo in the second and quite different round of investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soon Mr. Barr will be tasked with collating and adjudicating criminal referrals and arguments for indictments coming variously from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, possibly special counsel John Huber, Devin Nunes the ranking Republican and former chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and perhaps later even from Lindsey Graham, Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, along with any conclusions arising from federal attorneys within the Justice Department itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/progressive-effort-delegitimize-william-barr\/\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The current progressive effort to demonize attorney general William Barr is creepy, but then again not so strange. He came into the office with singular experience and an excellent reputation from past service. As attorney general, he has followed the law to the letter in handling the release, redactions, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1222,6,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-34d","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11817,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/progressives-face-a-bleak-post-mueller-landscape\/","url_meta":{"origin":11793,"position":0},"title":"Progressives Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 9, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Democrats have grown infuriated by Attorney General William Barr\u2019s indifference to their hysteria over the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Barr recently released a brief summary of special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s conclusions that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians to warp the 2016 election.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11866,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-2020-news-cycle-will-look-very-different\/","url_meta":{"origin":11793,"position":1},"title":"The 2020 News Cycle Will Look Very Different","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The Russia collusion narrative and associated Robert Mueller hysteria are all but over. Mueller\u2019s obstruction of justice narrative involving the non-crime of collusion is ending, too. Donald Trump\u2019s tax-return psychodrama is going the way of the Emoluments Clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12225,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-impeachment-rules-would-snare-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":11793,"position":2},"title":"New Impeachment Rules Would Snare Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Barack Obama\u2019s eight-year tenure was detrimental to the United States, but like most of his nonbelievers, I harbor no animosity for his person. Few critics that I know advocated that Obama be impeached, much less removed from office, before his reelection bid\u2014even amid his\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11334,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-legacies-of-robert-muellers-investigations\/","url_meta":{"origin":11793,"position":3},"title":"The Legacies of Robert Mueller\u2019s Investigations","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Some 450 days ago we were treated to melodramatic announcements from the media about the start-up of Robert Mueller\u2019s \u201cdream\u201d and \u201call-star\u201d team. Reporters gushed in the general hysteria of the times that Mueller would no doubt soon indict President Trump, some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mueller&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mueller","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/mueller\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11050,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/swamp-things-in-the-russia-investigation\/","url_meta":{"origin":11793,"position":4},"title":"Swamp Things in the Russia Investigation","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness \"The Swamp\u201d usually refers to the vast federal bureaucratic machinery of mostly unelected top officials who exercise influence and power without worry about the appearance of conflicts of interest. They are often exempt from the consequences of the laws and regulations that affect others.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;James Comey&quot;","block_context":{"text":"James Comey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/james-comey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11620,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mueller-squirrel-case\/","url_meta":{"origin":11793,"position":5},"title":"The Mueller Squirrel Case","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 23, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently indicted yet another peripheral character in his Trump probe, Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, for alleged money laundering in a matter quite separate from Trump. Like almost all of Mueller\u2019s indictments of the past 20 months, the charges against\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11794,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11793\/revisions\/11794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}