From the Justice Department to the Intelligence Community, Donald Trump and William Barr Have Won – The New Yorker

Attorney General William Barr has enabled Donald Trump to use the Justice Department for his own purposes.Photograph by Carlos Barria / Reuters

Three years ago, President Donald Trump appeared to be politically wounded and legally encircled. On May 17, 2017, eight days after Trump had fired James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel, to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Memos written by Comey stated that Trump had asked him to let go of the F.B.I. investigation of Michael Flynn, Trumps national-security adviser, who had been fired after he lied to Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials about the nature of a phone call that hed had with the Russian Ambassador. As 2017 came to a close, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents about the call and agreed to serve as a coperating witness for Muellers investigation. Trumps effort to flout post-Watergate reforms, which were designed to prevent a President from pressuring the F.B.I. into halting a politically embarrassing investigation, appeared to have failed.

Yet now, six months before he faces relection, Trump, with the help of Attorney General William Barr, is successfully rewriting that history. Last Thursday, Barr dismissed the charges against Flynn, declaring him the victim of an F.B.I. plot. (The federal judge who oversaw Flynns case said that he would appoint a retired judge to review Barrs action, and whether Flynn should now be charged with perjury.) At Barrs direction, the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Comey, the F.B.I. officials who investigated the Trump campaign, and the C.I.A. officials who concluded that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election on Trumps behalf. Barr is flatly rejecting the findings of Mueller and the Justice Departments inspector general: that the F.B.I was justified in investigating the highly unusual contacts between the Trump campaign and a hostile foreign governmentwhich did, in fact, intervene in the race on Trumps behalfand that Trump and his aides had welcomed that aid and repeatedly lied about their own actions.

Instead, Barr, in an extraordinary act by an Attorney General, declared, last month, that the F.B.I. investigation of the Trump campaign was without any basis, an attempt to sabotage the Presidency, and one of the greatest travesties in American history. He added, in reference to his departments new investigationbut without citing any specificsthat the evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppinessbut that there was something far more troubling here. Those statements violated a long-standing Justice Department practice of not commenting on investigations before they have been completed. In a subsequent interview, Barr hinted that he might release the results of the ongoing probe, led by a federal prosecutor, John Durham, before the election. Barr said that a Justice Department policy prohibiting prosecutors from filing criminal charges or taking investigative steps to impact elections did not apply. The idea is you dont go after candidates, Barr said. But, you know, as I say, I dont think any of the people whose actions are under review by Durham fall into that category.

On Wednesday, the acting director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, gave Republican senators records he had declassified that listed the names of three dozen Obama Administration officials, including Joe Biden, who requested to know the identity of an American citizen who had had a series of phone calls with foreign officials after Trump won the election. The citizen was Flynn. On Wednesday, those senators released the names of the officials and accused the former Vice-President of participating in a plot to entrap Flynn. Former national-security officials said that it is routine to request, or unmask, the names of Americans whose conversations with foreign officials contain intelligence, and noted that the practice has increased by seventy-five per cent under Trump. Ben Rhodes, a former top Obama adviser, tweeted, The unconfirmed, acting DNI using his position to criminalize routine intelligence work to help re-elect the president and obscure Russian intervention in our democracy would normally be the scandal here. Grenell replied in a tweet, Transparency is not political. But I will give you that it isnt popular in Washington DC.

Next Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to approve the nomination of John Ratcliffe, a pro-Trump Republican congressman from Texas, to replace Grenell as the director of National Intelligence. Ratcliffe caught Trumps eye when he assailed Mueller on national television during the former special counsels testimony before Congress. An individual involved in Ratcliffes confirmation effort said that the fact that the President trusts Congressman Ratcliffenot because they are friends but because hes observed his good judgment and the way he handles himselfthat affords a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the President and the intelligence community.

Former Justice Department and intelligence officials have expressed alarm at Trumps success at appointing partisan loyalists who they say echo the Presidents political messaging. David Laufman, a former head of the Justice Departments counterintelligence section, who worked on the Trump-Russia investigation, told me, I think we need to be careful not to be too lackadaisical in recognizing the significance of what is happening throughout our government, not just in law enforcement and intelligence but the attempted politicization of our public health system, citing attacks by Trump supporters on Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the governments top infectious-disease experts. Its everywhere, and it matters in ways that are increasingly important to the well-being of people in our country.

The transformation has been most striking at the Justice Department, an institution that, after Watergate, both Republicans and Democrats agreed should strive to remain politically neutral. Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, said that, more than any other modern Attorney General, Barr has enabled the President to use the department for his own purposes. Ive lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese, Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. Those guys were choir boys next to Barr. (A spokeswoman for Barr did not respond to a request for comment.)

Barr and some conservative legal scholars contend that the Constitution gives Presidents the power to run the executive branchwhich includes the Justice Department and the C.I.A.as they see fit. They view the post-Watergate oversight bodies created to investigate abuses by Presidents and their aidesfrom special counsels, such as Mueller, to the inspectors general appointed to oversee coronavirus spendingas unlawful infringements on Presidential power. On Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers joined Trumps personal lawyers in arguing, before the Supreme Court, that a House committee and New York City prosecutors should not be granted access to Trumps tax returns, because it would distract the President from his official duties and damage the office of the Presidency. Donald Ayer, who served as Deputy Attorney General under George H.W. Bush, told me that Barrs systematic trashing of the departments traditions of evenhandedness and independence have helped him make significant progress toward his goal of an autocratic President. He added, I think Barr is getting as much out of Trump as Trump is getting out of Barr. All for his own reasons of wanting the President to have complete and unchecked power.

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From the Justice Department to the Intelligence Community, Donald Trump and William Barr Have Won - The New Yorker