campaign finance violations—
that’s a closer question. Are there
arguments against the interpreta-
tion of these acts as crimes? Sure.
But Barr’s so infected with conflict
of interest, it’s not credible. If a
special counsel came up with those
conclusions, at least you’d have
some degree of credibility.Trump has talked about ɿring
the intelligence community
inspector general who found the
whistleblower’s complaint to be
“credibleŤ and “urgent.Ť He has the
right to do that, right?
It’s important how to talk about this.
Many people will say the president
has absolute power to fire anyone he
wants. That’s exaggerated. The Con-
stitution never mentions explicitly
the removal power. It was a gap in
the Constitution. There was this long
debate during the first Congress in- They decided that the Consti-
tution implicitly gave the president a
removal power. But the Constitution
also says that the president “shall
take care that the laws be faithfully
executed.” Removal for corrupt rea-
sons is in bad faith. In a paper with
my Fordham colleagues Andrew Kent
and Ethan Leib, we argue that the
president can have a removal power,
but it can’t be used in bad faith and
for corrupt reasons.
“The closest thing we
have seen to thiswas President Nixon
and the Saturday
Night Massacre.ŤPeriscope
16 NEWSWEEK.COM MARCH 06, 2020
FROM TOP: CHIP SOMODEVILLAʔGETTY; JA%IN%OTSFORDʔTHE WASHINGTONPOSTʔGETTY; AL DRAGOʔ%
LOOM%ERGʔGETTYQ&Aenforcement official? To do justice
impartially? Or to keep protecting
Trump behind the scenes without los-
ing more DOJ lawyers to rebuking res-
ignations? His track record is a clue
as to which he means. Yes, Trump’s
tweets would make his partisan work
more difficult.Rudolph Giuliani is reportedly
under investigation...
So that’s another great example. The
Ukraine conspiracy was, among
other things, a conspiracy to solicit
a foreign campaign finance dona-
tion, in kind. There’s ample evidence
that Giuliani was part of a campaign
finance felony conspiracy.But Barr’s Justice Department
has already said the Ukraine
Affair couldn’t be prosecuted
as a campaign ɿnance felony
because the “valueŤ of Ukraine’s
announcing an investigation of
Hunter Biden wasn’t Tuantiɿable.
Do you ɿnd that implausible?
This is exactly what the special coun-
sel is for. William Barr is named in
the whistleblower’s report, and he’s
named repeatedly in the call summary
of Trump’s call with President [Volo-
dymyr] Zelensky. It raises an obvious
appearance that it’s not just Giuliani
who’s a co-conspirator in a campaign
finance and bribery conspiracy, but
William Barr also. It doesn’t mean he’s
guilty, but it raises that appearance.
That’s why you have special counsel.Although Barr’s Justice decided
that campaign ɿnance charge was
inappropriate, it never addressed
a solicitation of bribery charge.
What do you make of that?
This is exactly when a special coun-
sel needs to be involved. The claim
of federal extortion is a stretch.
But bribery, honest services fraud,Has any court accepted that
argument?
This is new research. We published
that article a year ago.So the notion we have today that
prosecutors are supposed to be
independent of political inʀuenceŜ
how far does that go back?
Let me put that differently. Prose-
cutors have to balance politics with
professionalism. Our U.S. attorneys
are appointed by presidents and con-
firmed by the Senate and then offer
to resign from one administration
to the next. So that’s political. Our
state prosecutors, in 46 out of our 50
states, run for popular votes as mem-
bers of political parties. That is even
more partisan and political. But the
flip side is that we also have norms of
professionalism that are all the more
important to insulate those prosecu-
tors from partisanship.Who was the worst attorney
general in history?
In the 20th century, there were sev-
eral. A. Mitchell Palmer, a Democrat,
toward the end of Woodrow Wilson’s
term, led the Palmer Raids. There
was this post-WWI fear of immi-
grants and communism. Palmer was
famous for these xenophobic, racist
raids to roundup southern and east-
ern European immigrants. The one
that followed him, Harry Daugherty,
a Republican under Warren Harding
[and Calvin Coolidge], oversaw a tre-
mendous amount of corruption.
Then, under Democratic pres-
idents, there were a lot of cronies.
Then John F. Kennedy brought in
Robert F. Kennedy, his brother, which
was pretty stunning. Then you have
Nixon. He had two attorneys general
who were convicted of crimes. You
have John Mitchell, who was directly
involved with Watergate, and went