Does a father-son
dynamic help explain
the strange tenure
of Attorney General
William Barr?
contest—a sign that Trump and Barr may
be using “executive branch powers to
augment investigations aimed primarily
at the president’s adversaries.”
Amid this convulsion, Barr made
headlines in September when it turned
out that his Justice Department had
downgraded a whistle-blower’s report,
initially keeping it out of the loop that
would have allowed Congress to review
it. The complaint accused the president
of potentially impeachable offenses,
including a possible threat to withhold
military aid to Ukraine unless the coun-
try’s leader began an investigation that
might dig up dirt on Trump’s politi-
cal opponent, Joe Biden. The whistle-
blower’s account, which was deemed
“urgent” and “credible” by the intelli-
gence community’s Trump-appointed
inspector general, alleged that the presi-
dent had urged his Ukrainian counter-
part to coordinate an internal Biden
probe with Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Attor-
ney General William Barr.
Barr, for his part, has claimed ignorance about Trump’s over-
ture to Ukraine. (In May, Barr declared under oath that the pres-
ident has never asked him to investigate anybody.) But despite
being prominently named in the complaint, Barr chose not to
recuse himself from overseeing the matter. This unprecedent-
ed series of events triggered an official impeachment inquiry
against the president, only the fourth such probe in U.S. history.
In announcing the inquiry, Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi stated, “The president must be held accountable. No
one is above the law.” She also made a point of singling out a
brazen William Barr. During a series of interviews, she main-
tained that he had “gone rogue,” engaging in nothing short
of a “cover-up of the cover-up.” Meanwhile, a New York Times
editorial characterized the administration’s stance as “deny,
deflect and delay”—a playbook that Trump learned from his
mentor, the sinister New York fixer and architect of paranoid
politics, Roy Cohn. (Barr has bristled when his career has been
compared with Cohn’s. And he was reportedly angered upon
learning that Trump had dropped his name with Ukraine’s
president—and concerned about Giuliani’s fixer-like forays as
part of the Ukraine Affair. Once known for his restraint, Barr
surely would have been appalled that the man he now serves
was also accusing the chairman of the House intelligence
committee, Adam Schiff, of “treason,” using smear tactics
reminiscent of Cohn at his most unhinged.)
Who, then, is the real William Barr? I wanted to investigate
that question through the prism of his growing up as a young
conservative in the intellectually demanding and socially cos-
seted world of New York private schools—ironically, the same
schools that educated Cohn. I wanted to understand how he
might have been affected in the 1970s by the public scandalCLASS STRUGGLE
After headmaster Donald Barr left Dalton in 1974,
the school yearbook gave him an upbeat send-off.Let’s address that issue in a moment. But first, a more imme-
diate question—one that Washington has been asking for the
good part of a year: What has gotten into mainstream Republi-
can, über-decent Bill Barr?
Many who have known and respected him for decades were
baffled when he signed on to head the Justice Department.
“What was he thinking?” one former colleague remarked.
“Everyone knew what Donald Trump was. Barr didn’t need
the job.” The president, in fact, had already tried to hire Barr
as one of his personal lawyers, but Barr demurred, declaring
publicly, “I didn’t want to stick my head in that meat grinder.”
And yet, ever since Barr was sworn in last February, some
observers have been increasingly bewildered as they’ve tried to
understand Barr’s relationship with Donald Trump. The stat-
ure and experience that Barr had gained while working for two
other presidents—Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—as
well as his long history in private law practice and public ser-
vice, should have shielded him from many critics. Indeed, Barr
seems to be the one senior Trump official toward whom the
president does not project a public attitude of superiority. But
there he was, in May, on a Ne w Yorker cover, shining the presi-
dent’s shoes, alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCon-
nell and Senator Lindsey Graham, as if he was a willing new
recruit to Trump’s team of Big Lie sycophants.
Barr’s detractors and even those who have admired him have
been alarmed by his tenacious defense of Trump’s views on
executive power and wondered about the legal rationale behind
a range of policies and pronouncements. Barr essentially dis-
missed the findings of the two-year-long Mueller investigation.
Barr has supported measures that could lead to the indefinite
detention of asylum seekers. He has apparently approved
administration officials’ refusal to comply with congressional
subpoenas. And lately, according to the Washington Post, Barr
has been meeting with espionage officials from foreign govern-
ments, “seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that
President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’
examination” of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential
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