Name: Does the justice department work for the Trump campaign now? Barr thinks so | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut
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Does the justice department work for the Trump campaign now? Barr thinks so | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

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This article is more than 2 years oldThis article is more than 2 years oldThe US attorney general seems determined to turn the DoJ into a fully fledged arm of the Trump re-election teamLast modified on Wed 6 Jan 2021 18.56 ESTA week before the motion to dismiss in the Flynn case, Trump had that a prosecution like Flynn’s “should never be allowed to happen … again”. The day that the motion was filed, Trump that the Obama administration officials had targeted Flynn to try to “take down a president”. In co-ordination, Trump campaign manager BradParscale issued a saying: “[T]he Obama-Biden officials responsible for these misdeeds must be held accountable.”Immediately after the filing in the Flynn case, Barr went on national television and attacked the FBI, pointedly disparaging its 2016 investigation into Russian interference and that FBI officials or ex-officials were under examination for prosecution: “[J]ust because something may even stink to high heaven and … appear to everyone to be bad we still have to apply the right standard and be convinced that there’s a violation of a criminal statute.”Then on Wednesday, Barr’s press spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, upped the ante in the high-stakes effort to lend political support to Gen Flynn and to Trump’s partisan political interests. Kupec complained about an allegedly nefarious effort involving Joe Biden to “unmask” Flynn’s identity during the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.She to the Fox news correspondent Martha MacCallum: “Martha, what happened to candidate Trump and then President Trump was one of the greatest political injustices in American history and should never happen again.”It is remarkable how quickly Flynn’s fate is put aside and the focus shifted to the president.When has a justice department press person ever issued so nakedly political a statement?Biden was among several people who asked that the intelligence committee to identify the unnamed American who had been recorded in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, about Obama’s newly imposed sanctions in December 2016. It apparently doesn’t matter to the Barr justice department that the rules were scrupulously adhered to in this “unmasking”. It also doesn’t matter that such requests are permitted if the identity unmasked is necessary to understand the information, and that such requests are hardly unusual. The National Security Agency handles such unmasking requests in thousands of cases: 10,000 in 2019 and nearly 17,000 in 2018.Using the department in this way undermines the integrity of the lawyers and prosecutors who work thereKupec’s statement tracks perfectly with Mr Trump’s partisan campaign messaging and with the president’s efforts to present himself and his most loyal followers as victims of a conspiracy. The DoJ has now been let loose in search of nefarious activity by Biden, and in the hope it can cast his way a McCarthyite shadow of suspicion.Barr, the attorney general, is by no means the first occupant of that office to do political work for or serve as a political ally of the president who appointed him. Indeed, Edmund Randolph, the first attorney general of the United States, was a close ally of George Washington, having served as the . During Randolph’s term, Washington relied on him for support on matters that went .Other attorneys general have followed in Randolph’s footsteps, serving as close political allies of the president. Examples from the early years of the country include , who worked for the Bank of the United States.In the 20th century, Franklin Roosevelt’s attorneys general regularly helped him in political battles. Some of those battles and some did not. Other close political allies of the president who appointed them include , who was appointed at 35 by his brother John, and widely . President , was a longtime friend of, and political operative for, Reagan.But throughout American history, when presidents have appointed political cronies to be attorney general, they were looking for people only to help them pursue a policy agenda.Nixon’s efforts to enlist John Mitchell in the Watergate cover-up and get one of Mitchell’s successors, Elliot Richardson, to fire the Watergate special prosecutor stand out as . nor asked their attorneys general to use the vast investigatory and prosecutorial power of the justice department itself to intervene in criminal cases to help cronies, to buy the silence of those who might threaten him, or to discredit political adversaries. That is a new and dangerous ballgame.Using the justice department in this way undermines the integrity and professionalism of the lawyers and prosecutors who work there. It turns law into an arena for gaining partisan advantage and settling political grudges.Having gotten away with doing the same in his dealings with Ukraine, the president has an attorney general who is only too happy to go beyond merely politicizing the DoJ. He seems determined to turn it into a full-fledged arm of the Trump campaign.

This article is more than 2 years oldThis article is more than 2 years oldThe US attorney general seems determined to turn the DoJ into a fully fledged arm of the Trump re-election teamLast modified on Wed 6 Jan 2021 18.56 ESTA week before the motion to dismiss in the Flynn case, Trump had that a prosecution like Flynn’s “should never be allowed to happen … again”. The day that the motion was filed, Trump that the Obama administration officials had targeted Flynn to try to “take down a president”. In co-ordination, Trump campaign manager BradParscale issued a saying: “[T]he Obama-Biden...

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Austin Sarat

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

Does the justice department work for the Trump campaign now? Barr thinks so | Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

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