Donald Trump has a special relationship with the law. The law is important to him. Not that he has the least respect for law, nor the least concern for its role in achieving a just order in society. No, for Trump, the law is a weapon to be wielded to protect himself and to strike against his enemies.
(Even as a mere citizen, Trump brought an extraordinary number of nuisance suits for such purposes.)
One tip-off on Trump’s abuse of the law is that Trump’s push with the government of Ukraine was to get the new Ukrainian President to make a public announcement that he was opening an investigation into Joe Biden (and his son, and the company for which the son worked). That, apparently, was the crucial thing: not that the “investigation” would show anything – almost everyone who has looked into the matter has found that there’s no real dirt on Biden to be found – but to provide the Trump gang with something to point to that suggests, merely by innuendo, that Biden carries the taint of corruption.
Last night, the New York Times brought us the news that the “Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation.” The legal experts who discussed this last night on MSNBC noted that not only had the Justice Department provided not even a hint at what kind of “crime” was suspected, but that it is very difficult to imagine what kind of crime could be committed by FBI or federal prosecutors engaged in an investigation such as that which was launched into the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Which is a tip-off that this is the same charade, the same abuse of the legal process as Trump attempted to extort from the Ukrainians: a public announcement of a bogus investigation in order to taint Trump enemies by mere insinuation.
Just as we have every reason to believe that no genuine “dirt” on Biden would ever be found in the Ukrainian environment – Trump’s people have already had to lie about Biden seeking to gett rid of a prosecutor for his own corrupt purposes, whereas the real reason was the complete opposite (i.e. to get rid of a prosecutor who was corrupt himself, and failing to help solve the Ukraine’s corruption problem) – so also one should bet that nothing of any substance will come of AG William Barr’s “criminal investigation” into how the Department he heads began to investigate the Russian interference in the 2016 election, and how the Trump campaign welcomed it.
What matters to Trump is the announcement— just another Trump way of feeding lies to the people to strike at his enemies and maintain his own power. And we’ve seen for months that the current “Attorney General” — whose lies about the Mueller Report helped blunt the impact of that “Roadmap for Impeachment” — has no compunction about using the Lie to pervert the system of Justice to protect a corrupt and criminal President.
The man who is nominally heading this investigation – John H. Durham, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut – has a reputation for integrity. I wonder what kind of story he could tell.
In particular, I wonder what kind of story he could tell about what impeachable offenses his boss, Attorney General Barr, has committed in service to the President who appointed him, and in violation of his oath of office.