Is Bill Barr a bad Attorney General — just because the "vast liberal conspiracy" says so?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

13 February 2020

 

 

Brainlessness flying loose?

 

Most days I wonder whether there is hope for the human species.

 

Consider in evidence — the "vast liberal conspiracy's" assault on Attorney General William Barr.

 

 

Here, I pick on one of the conspiracy's propaganda organs, Vox

 

Vox prides itself on appearing to be fact-oriented and reasonable in its interpretations of those.

 

However, my reading of Vox (over the last few years) indicates that the media outlet displays:

 

 

a pronounced tendency to ignore essential facts that would cut against its Anti-Trump Rage

 

and

 

a curiously irrational bias against anything even defensibly "conservative" in professed values.

 

 

For a media source that pretends to educate the public, this latter trait is highly questionable.

 

 

Evaluate Vox's most recent assault on Attorney General Barr

 

Andrew Prokop began the Vox-led critique by saying that:

 

 

Attorney General Bill Barr and his allies are centralizing control over the Justice Department and acting in increasingly blatant ways to protect President Donald Trump’s interests and allies.

 

This became evident in dramatic fashion Tuesday when the entire team prosecuting longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone withdrew from that case after Justice Department higher-ups made clear they planned to override their sentencing recommendation.

 

© 2020 Andrew Prokop, The fiasco at Bill Barr’s Justice Department, explained, Vox (13 February 2020)

 

 

The rest of Prokop's propaganda points to facts regarding internal Justice Department staff replacements.

 

Not once does it discuss the legal facts that set the context for Roger Stone's indictment and conviction.

 

Nor does Prokop ever explain the sentencing guidelines (or precedents) that would customarily apply in Stone's case. Instead, he satisfies himself by saying that probation officers had recommended 7 to 9 years, based on those unexplained guidelines. He says that the federal prosecutors agreed, but again Prokop makes no attempt to explicate whether Stone's trial was a fair one. Very arguably, it was not.

 

In sum, Prokop is arguing that Bill Barr is a bad AG simply (and only) because he substituted his idea of a fair sentence for that of his Department's prosecutorial team.

 

Prokop also finds blame in Barr's reassignment of some of his Department's prosecutors during his top-down intervention.

 

 

But . . .

 

. . . from legal and administrative standpoints, how is Barr so obviously wrong?

 

Attorney Generals routinely override their subordinates' recommendations. This is not a novel practice.

 

Nor is it unusual for an Attorney General to mold his or her Justice Department's filtered work product to better accord with the President's views.

 

One need only look at Eric Holder's easily critiqued performance under President Obama.

 

Same with the Bush II administration. And every other one that I can recall.

 

 

Consequently, Vox is full of (very lazily inclined) nonsense on this issue

 

If you want to criticize Bill Barr, do so legitimately — on explicated legal and federal administrative grounds.

 

That, of course, would require examining actual law and real precedent. As well as accepting that an office holder, who disagrees with one's perspective is not necessarily incompetent or evil.

 

As an attorney, I have not yet seen Bill Barr do anything that is not legally and historically defensible, according to someone who adheres to his Executive Branch Primacy viewpoint. That's a perfectly legitimate view, according to today's interpretation of still ambiguous law.

 

 

Erroneously — the "vast liberal conspiracy" . . .

 

. . . keeps wanting to pretend that the Justice Department is:

 

 

a completely independent entity

 

somehow outside of

 

and

 

not allowably affected by goings on in all three branches of government, including its own Executive Branch.

 

 

This simply is not, and never has been, true.

 

This "liberal" delusion is not embraced by the Constitution or its history.

 

 

Explain to me . . .

 

How the President can (and should) select the Attorney General, with Senate approval, and not expect his or her selection to reflect the President's views about "justice"?

 

The "liberal" critique of AG Barr — in its customarily glaring absence of applied and relevant facts and governing law — is pure BS.

 

This shortcoming in liberals' proposed case against Barr is especially notable, when one compares Eric Holder's annoyingly weak performance — based on rationally applied legal standards — as an AG under President Obama.

 

 

The moral? — To present a fairly constructed, persuasive anti-Barr case . . .

 

. . . one had better treat:

 

 

(i) real and inclusively chosen facts

 

(ii) reasonably stated applicable law

 

and

 

(iii) relevant administrative precedents.

 

 

The "liberal conspiracy" does not, and has not, done this. I suspect because it cannot.

 

In legal practice, criticism from ignorant (highly biased) nitwits can be substantively ignored.