I’m going to assume that the readers here don’t need anyone to recount all the accumulating and escalating ways that this Attorney General of the United States is assaulting the foundations of our constitutional order, the rule of law, and the integrity of the upcoming election. As time goes on, Barr becomes ever more brazen in his transformation of the Department of Justice into a weapon and a shield for a lawless President, and his acting as an accomplice in Donald Trump’s drive to transform the American system of government into an authoritarian dictatorship.
The question I want to raise is: Can anything be done — should anything be done — about Barr? Are there measures worth taking beyond simply working to win the upcoming Election in the expectation that if Donald Trump can be defeated, and Joe Biden can assume the Presidency, William Barr will cease to be Attorney General?
The current state of play — with Barr becoming ever more flagrant in his lies and criminality, and with the Democrats seemingly limited to sniping from the sidelines — makes me uneasy. It feels to much like more of the “Trump and his minions can get away with anything” saga.
But what else can be done?
I’ve called for Barr’s impeachment more than once here, most recently in June in a piece about the warning signs that Barr and Trump might be teaming up for what might amount to a virtual coup d’etat.
I still think that the need to bring out the heavy weaponry of impeachment was already clear more than a year ago. But now, with the election less than two months away, is there any reason to consider beginning an impeachment process? Could hearings in the House serve any useful purpose — calling the public’s attention to the menace the man poses, and to his lack of credibility in advance of Barr’s apparently possible “October Surprise” to smear Joe Biden — or at this late date would that be a distraction, counter-productive?
If Impeachment is off the table, is there any other form of congressional action — some other forms of “hearings” that could be dramatic enough to constitute a significant blow in this battle — that would be possible between now and the election?
One other possible move occurs to me. It is another act of denunciation, of which we’ve had plenty, but one that might be dramatic enough to be qualitatively more impactful than the chorus playing now:
Would it be possible, and if possible would it be worthwhile, to gather every living former Attorney General together to hold a joint press conference and issue a joint statement denouncing Barr and informing the public of the full scope and significance of Barr’s consistent misconduct, his violations of his oath of office and of the law?
Such a joint statement/press conference would have to include the Republican-appointed Attorneys General who served under George W. Bush (i.e. John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales). I think it entirely possible that both of those men would be willing to play such a role— Ashcroft being a man of some integrity (I believe) and Gonzales having been willing recently to publicly castigate another Trump accomplice.
That more or less exhausts my own ideas about what might be done. I would be interested in hearing ideas that others may propose.
But in any event, I am not content with the present state of play between Barr’s assaults on our system of justice and the rule of law and the protestations of those now defending our endangered democracy.