Staff Writer
NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/26/opinion/william-barr-trump.html
By Emily Bazelon in the NYT:
William Barr had returned to private life after his first stint as attorney general when he sat down to write an article for The Catholic Lawyer. It was 1995, and Mr. Barr saw an urgent threat to religion generally and to Catholicism, his faith, specifically. The danger came from the rise of “moral relativism,” in Mr. Barr’s view. “There are no objective standards of right and wrong,” he wrote. “Everyone writes their own rule book.”
And so, at first, it seemed surprising that Mr. Barr, now 69, would return after 26 years to the job of attorney general, to serve Donald Trump, the moral relativist in chief, who writes and rewrites the rule book at whim.
But a close reading of his speeches and writings shows that, for decades, he has taken a maximalist, Trumpian view of presidential power that critics have called the “imperial executive.” He was a match, all along, for a president under siege. “He alone is the executive branch,” Mr. Barr wrote of whoever occupies the Oval Office, in a memo to the Justice Department in 2018, before he returned.
William Barr in Senator Mitch McConnell’s office in January before hearings on his nomination to be attorney general.
Erin Schaff for The New York Times
Now, with news reports that his review into the origins of the Russian investigation that so enraged Mr. Trump has turned into a full-blown criminal investigation, Mr. Barr is arousing fears that he is using the enormous power of the Justice Department to help the president politically, subverting the independence of the nation’s top law enforcement agency in the process.
Why is he giving the benefit of his reputation, earned over many years in Washington, to this president? His Catholic Lawyer article suggests an answer to that question. The threat of moral relativism he saw then came when “secularists used law as a weapon.” Mr. Barr cited rules that compel landlords to rent to unmarried couples or require universities to treat “homosexual activist groups like any other student group.” He reprised the theme in a speech at Notre Dame this month.
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Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.
Like most bigoted theocrats, including his nominally Methodist predecessor Sessions, Barr “cherry picks” religious teachings. Barr’s White Nationalist cruelty and intolerance, particularly against migrants, the most vulnerable among us, flies directly in the face of Catholic social justice teachings.
Sessions planned to turn the DOJ into a “White Nationalist Law Firm,” targeting migrants, the LGBTQ community, African Americans, women, and lawyers, among others. Sure, he refused to violate ethics by quashing the investigation of Trump. But, that’s more a case of protecting himself than it is a courageous stand against Trump.
Barr has continued the assault on Due Process and the American justice system, while also adding the dimension of misrepresenting the Mueller investigation and ignoring ethics to protect Trump.
PWS
10-30-19