Tag Archives: Attorney General

Content of character: does it still count?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Make no mistake that I likely would feel differently were I of African-American or Latino or Asian descent. I am none of those.

Having laid that predicate down, I want to engage in the discussion over who President-elect Biden should select as the nation’s next attorney general.

I practically jumped out of my shoes the other day when I heard an African-American commentator, Jonathan Capehart, say out loud that the three individuals Biden is believed to be considering as AG are too white for his taste. Capehart wants more “diversity” among the finalists.

Hmm. Let’s examine this briefly. The three people Biden reportedly is pondering are U.S. District Judge Merrick Garland, former deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates and U.S. Sen. Doug Jones. They all possess exemplary legal credentials. They also all have committed through their careers to advancing the cause of civil rights.

Their only “shortcoming” is that they aren’t people of color.

President-elect Biden has kept his pledge to nominate executive branch team members who reflect the nation. Has loaded the Cabinet with and top-level staffers with African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, women; my goodness, he even has selected an openly gay man to serve in the Cabinet.

President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, only to have his nomination blocked in 2016 by Senate Republicans who wanted to wait for the presidential election outcome that year. Garland has been a champion for minority rights, for gay rights and has staked out a center-left course while serving on the federal bench.

Sally Yates has demonstrated her own commitment to fair and impartial justice as a deputy AG, striving to be sensitive to minority Americans’ concerns over whether the justice system was loaded against them.

Doug Jones, who lost his bid for re-election to the Senate from Alabama in 2020, served as a federal prosecutor and obtained the conviction of the Klansmen who blew up the Birmingham, Ala., church in 1963 that killed four precious African-American girls; it was one of the most notorious hate crimes of the 20th century. He, too, has earned his spurs in fighting for minority rights.

Is it essential that the next AG be a person of color? No. It isn’t. It is essential that the next attorney general refrain from engaging in partisan politics and administer justice dispassionately and in accordance with the law.

I want to remind everyone of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day in 1963. He spoke of his “dream” that one day black Americans can be judged by “content of their character” rather than “the color of their skin.”

Shouldn’t that noble goal apply to any American?

Just go ahead and quit, Mr. AG

The word is out via the Washington Post that Attorney General William Barr is so fed up with Donald Trump that he is considering taking a hike from his post.

He is tired of POTUS’s tweets about current cases and is tired of Trump’s attempts to undermine the legal pros who work for Barr at the Department of Justice. Or so it is being reported.

The quit-now chorus is growing in Washington, for those reasons and for others relating to the work he has done as attorney general, namely his seeming loyalty first to the president and his apparent rejection of the oath he took to defend and protect the Constitution.

I am generally in the latter camp. I am greatly disappointed in the job Barr has done. He has acted far more like Donald Trump’s personal lawyer than a man who took a sacred oath to protect the nation’s governing document.

However, if he wants to quit and cite the president’s interference, well, that’s fine with me, too.

William Barr would be entitled to use whatever reason he chooses to use. Indeed, the apparent burgeoning tension between the president and the AG would seem to be reason enough for Barr to call it quits on the guy Trump reportedly wanted to be his “Roy Cohn.”

And, just who was Cohn? He was the infamous attorney who stood up for the equally infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy who launched the anti-commie tirade in the early 1950s. Cohn ended up getting disgraced and disbarred over the manner in which he conducted himself while McCarthy sought to ferret out communist infiltrators in our federal government.

In any event, William Barr likely needs to go. Count me as one American who’s all-in on the attorney general hitting the road.

William Barr: biggest disappointment of Trump Cabinet

I wanted William Barr to be a stellar choice to become U.S. attorney general. I wanted him to demonstrate that Donald Trump was capable of selecting someone with high honor, integrity and gravitas.

He has disappointed me in the extreme.

Barr came to the AG post after serving in that position for President Bush 41. He distinguished himself well serving as the head of Justice Department near the end of President Bush’s single term. My hope when he emerged as the successor to Jeff Sessions was that he would do so yet again.

Instead, he has done so many things that have shattered my misplaced optimism.

He disagreed with the inspector general’s findings that the FBI was not motivated by partisan bias when it began its probe into the Russian attack on our electoral system; he continues to insist that the FBI “spied” on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign; he misrepresented special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings into “The Russia Thing”; he said Mueller cleared Trump of “collusion,” when Mueller did nothing of the kind.

Former AG Eric Holder has said that Barr is “unfit” to serve as attorney general. I fear he is right.

William Barr took an oath in effect to be the people’s lawyer. He has become the president’s personal legal bag man.

He is the No. 1 disappointment to emerge from the Trump morass.

There’s actually limit to what Barr would do for POTUS?

What do you know about this?

Donald Trump reportedly asked Attorney General William Barr to call a press conference and declare in front of the entire world that the president didn’t do anything wrong with regard to that phone call with the Ukrainian president.

However, the AG reportedly declined. “No can do,” or words to that effect he supposedly told the president, who — naturally! — has denied Barr’s rejection.

I am deeply disappointed so far in Barr since he became attorney general. I thought he would have conducted himself in keeping with his role as the “people’s attorney,” rather than acting as personal counsel for the POTUS.

Reports, though, of Barr declining to do what the Liar in Chief sought gives me a glimmer — and that’s all it is — of hope that there are limits to what Barr would do on behalf of Donald Trump.

The president is facing a near-certain impeachment in the House over that phone call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump asked Zelenskiy for political help in exchange for weapons the Ukrainians  would use against Russian-backed rebel aggressors.

The AG is now being dragged into this matter over reports of a favor sought by the president who, it looks to me, is trying to cover up the impeachable offense he committed.

Hey, and to think it’s all going to be made public in just a few days.

Hang on, folks. The ride is about to get even rougher.

Barr has become a big disappointment … dang it!

William Barr came into office as U.S. attorney general bringing a glimmer of hope — even among some of the nation’s most vigorous foes of Donald Trump, the man who nominated him to be the AG.

I was one of those who had hope that Barr would be a grownup, that he would conduct himself with professional impartiality, taking seriously the oath to which he swore to be our attorney general, not be an a**-coverer for the president of the United States.

The AG has let me down.

Hard, man!

His testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee was an exercise in obfuscation and evasion. Then he did something even worse: He refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee and answer questions from that panel’s team of legal eagles.

I don’t know what I was thinking, now that I look back on what happened prior to Barr’s nomination.

Trump fired Jeff Sessions as AG because Sessions refused to act as a Trump sycophant; that’s why he recused himself from the Russia investigation. He couldn’t under Justice Department rules take part in an investigation into an activity in which he was a principal player. Sessions served on Trump’s campaign team, then on his transition team, which the DOJ was probing with regard to allegations of collusion and other potential misdeeds.

So he walked away, handed the matter over to his No. 2 at DOJ, Rod Rosenstein, who then appointed Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel. All of that enraged Trump, as we have since learned.

Now he has installed his “boy” at DOJ, William Barr.

Barr’s record as attorney general near the end of President George H.W. Bush’s term suggested to me that he would be the right man for the country, not necessarily for the president.

Silly me. It turns out he is the right man for Trump and he is wrong for the country.

I wanted to feel good about Barr. Sadly, he has let me down.

Dammit, anyway!

‘Collusion delusion’ becomes new Trump mantra

Donald Trump has produced what sounds like a 2020 campaign slogan, referring to the “collusion delusion” as he continues his touchdown dance after Robert Mueller concluded his investigation into The Russia Thing.

It’s a knee-slapper! Don’t you think? Well, me neither. The president is reciting it and getting lots of laughs, cheers, whoops and hollers from the adoring crowds.

It is good to put a couple of issues into perspective.

First of all, special counsel Mueller did not say that there was “no collusion.” He said, according to Attorney General William Barr, that he found insufficient evidence to produce a complaint of collusion with the Russians against the president and his 2016 campaign team.

We haven’t yet seen Mueller’s report. William Barr today said he intends to release the report, with redactions, in a couple of weeks. We don’t yet know what precisely Barr is going to black out from public view. He has talked openly about grand jury testimony, issues related to national security and statements that mention individuals who aren’t formally charged with wrongdoing.

My sincere and fervent hope is that the AG releases as much as of the report as possible. He has pledged transparency. I want to believe him.

Absent any knowledge of what Mueller has concluded, it is impossible — even for the president — to say categorically that he has been “exonerated” at any level regarding any allegation that has been leveled against him.

Trump is incapable of being magnanimous in victory. He vows revenge against those who he says have done him wrong. That includes damn near everyone who didn’t vote for him, or so it sounds to me. He continues to label the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt” that failed. He continues to refer to the media as the “enemy of the people.” Trump hurls despicable personal insults at congressional Democrats; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has become his latest target.

One more point: We haven’t seen anything yet about obstruction of justice. Barr said that Mueller did not “exonerate” the president, even though he did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that he did obstruct justice. Once again, we need to see precisely what evidence Mueller collected and we need to be able to assess how he reached his conclusion.

Yet the president of the United States, as he is prone to do, is getting way out in front of this still-developing story.

Hey, he still has his campaign slogan that he thinks will serve him well. “Collusion delusion” it is. My sense is that Donald Trump is wallowing in his own delusion as well.

Trump tweets reveal desperation?

Robert Mueller is finishing up his exhaustive investigation into all things relating to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

We don’t yet know what the special counsel has determined. However, the president’s reaction in advance of the report’s conclusion might be offering some clues.

Trump set some sort of unofficial personal record this weekend with a Twitter torrent that laid waste to a number of targets: Mueller, of course; the late John McCain; the “fake news” media; Democrats, naturally.

I just don’t know how this is the conduct of someone who is confident that the special counsel is going to exonerate him. We are witnessing a possible unraveling of an individual who well might be petrified at the prospect that the special counsel is about to deliver the goods on him.

It’s not a pretty sight.

The trashing of the late Arizona Republican senator, McCain, is especially troubling. Hey, I have written about this extensively already. I just cannot get past the notion that the president of the United States would feel so threatened by the memory of a man he now says he never has liked.

And why in the world would he disparage, denigrate and dismiss someone who served with valor and, yes, heroism in defense of his country? Why now, seven months after McCain died of brain cancer?

The specter of the pending Mueller report being sent to Attorney General William Barr looms large in all of this.

Donald Trump likely doesn’t know what Mueller has concluded. He is reacting seemingly on some sort of concern that Mueller is going to inflict potentially mortal wounds on the president, his closest aides, even his family.

This is all quite nerve-wracking. I’m just a chump blogger. I also am someone who was shocked beyond measure that Trump got elected president of the United States. Still, my nerves are beginning to get the better of me as I await the findings of the special counsel.

Therefore I only can imagine what is occurring within the president’s nervous system.

AG Barr now must make good on pledge

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has the potential to emerge as one of the few grownups to serve in the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump.

The Senate confirmed him this week with a 54-45 vote, which I thought was much closer and more partisan than I expected. However, he’s now the head guy at the Justice Department.

AG Barr’s task now is to make good on the pledges he made to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing.

Barr said he wouldn’t be bullied by the president of the United States; he said special counsel Robert Mueller will be allowed to finish his exhaustive probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election attacks; he has expressed faith in Mueller’s integrity and professionalism.

I have faith that Barr will make good on his pledge. This isn’t his first DOJ rodeo. Barr served as attorney general from 1991 to 1992 during the George H.W. Bush administration. He is a top-notch lawyer. Yes, he’s a partisan, but we should expect that from any AG regardless of his or her party affiliation.

So, Mr. Attorney General, I implore you to be faithful to your sworn statements in front of the entire nation, if not the world.

Where is Sen. Graham’s spine?

What in the name of political courage has become of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican that I used to admire.

Graham at one time issued a stern warning to Donald J. Trump, saying the president would have “hell to pay” were he to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Well, Trump fired Sessions on Wednesday, the day after the midterm election. Graham’s message was, shall we say, decidedly less confrontational.

“I look forward to working with President Trump to find a confirmable, worthy successor so that we can start a new chapter at the Department of Justice … ” Graham said in one of the more milquetoast-y statements in recent memory.

He also once said that any effort to remove special counsel Robert Mueller, derailing his exhaustive investigation into the Russian attack on our electoral system in 2016 could “be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency.”

Guess what, senator. Sessions’s firing and the elevation of Matthew Whittaker as acting AG just might bode poorly for the future of Mueller’s probe.

I should note that Graham was one of a horde of Republicans who ran against Trump for the GOP nomination in 2016. Back when they were foes, Graham spoke rough and tough about Trump, just as so many other foes did. Trump beat them and now they have become sycophants, yes men.

I am believing they are cowed by the president, who has hijacked a party with which he had zero affiliation before he ran for the nation’s highest office.

That includes Lindsey Graham.

I’ll just call it what it is: chickensh**!

‘Sad’ to watch POTUS trash the AG

Donald J. Trump continues to concoct reasons for why he believes Attorney General Jeff Sessions was a bad choice from the beginning.

He interviewed badly with the U.S. Senate; he couldn’t answer easy questions; he was “mixed up and confused.”

What absolute crap! The reason the president is miffed at the AG can be summed up in a single word: recusal.

Sessions recognized what Trump didn’t see coming: The AG’s role in Trump’s presidential campaign precluded him from being able to investigate matters involving the Russian government’s effort to influence the 2016 election outcome. He did what Justice Department policy and rules require: he recused himself from all things dealing with Russia.

And the president didn’t see that coming? He didn’t anticipate any kind of conflict of interest?

Because of his own ignorance of government ethics, Trump is now tell media outlets that he now doesn’t “have an attorney general.” He calls it “so sad.”

Go ahead, Mr. President. Fire the attorney general. Understand, though, that the AG — whether it’s Sessions or someone else — doesn’t work for the president. He works for the rest of us out here. He works also for those of us who didn’t support Trump’s effort to become president.

The attorney general shouldn’t do the president’s bidding because of some effort to protect the president’s political future.

If you’re looking for a “sad” circumstance regarding Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, it is because the AG did something correct and proper and that action — all by itself — has aroused Donald Trump’s rage.