I wanted to believe the best in William Barr, even going to back to when Donald Trump appointed him to be U.S. attorney general. Barr had served as AG during the George H.W. Bush administration and I long thought of him as a man of principle.
Silly me. He turned out to be a Trump toadie during his second stint as attorney general.
Now we hear from Barr during those taped depositions he gave to the House 1/6 committee that he believed Trump’s claim of vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election were “bullsh**.” Oh my goodness! He’s telling the truth! Finally!
I wanted to give him kudos for telling the House panel what it needed to hear. Then I thought: Not so fast; this guy shoulda said as much long ago, when Trump first threw out the vote fraud canard.
Instead, Barr remained quiet. He even seemed on at least two occasions to endorse the notion that the 2020 presidential election had been infected by fraudulent ballot-casting.
Yes, there is probative value in what Barr has declared. I’ll give him that much. However, I will not hold this man up as a paragon of judicial virtue for telling the House panel what he should have revealed to the public long ago.