NEWSWEEK.COM 17
TRUMPKINS
Clockwise from left:
Roger Stone arrives
at court; former
Trump lawyer Michael
Cohen testiɿes;
and former Trump
National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn.to jail. And then Richard Kleindienst
who pled guilty to a misdemeanor for
lying about political favors relating
to regulation.And where does Bill Barr ɿt in?
Given how Barr has intervened to min-
imize the significance of the Mueller
Report, to arguably misrepresent the
Mueller Report and to perhaps aid and
abet an international bribery conspir-
acy and campaign finance violation...
But he denies any involvement.
We don’t know. And we do have to
be skeptical of what Lev Parnas says.
But the whistleblower’s complaint
and the call summary itself raise
significant questions about Barr’s
involvement.Kamala Harris asked Barr if Trump
had suggested investigations to
him, and he didn’t really answer.
Do we know yet for sure?
When he comes back to testify in late
March, I’m sure Democrats will ask
questions in a precise way to give him
less wiggle room about how the pres-
ident has been involved.Barr has posted some very
combative speeches on the Justice
Department website. In October
he gave one at Notre Dame,
attacking “secularists and their
allies among the ‘progressives,’Ť
and he gave a speech before the
Federalist Society in November
attacking “the Left,Ť meaning
Democrats. Is that normal?
It’s remarkably not normal. The
language he’s used was deliberately
inflammatory. Those words affect the
legitimacy of everything the attorney
general does. When he attacks the Left
and portrays the Left as being a threat
to Americans, it then undermines—He said, “In waging a scorched earth,
no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’
against this Administration, it
is the Left that is engaged in the
systematic shredding of norms and
the undermining of the rule of law.Ť
And there’s more than that. He said
the language of “resistance” is the lan-
guage of revolution.Yes, he said: “‘Resistance’ is
the language used to describe
insurgency against rule imposed by
an occupying military power... They
see themselves as engaged in a war
to cripple, by any means necessary,
a duly elected government.Ť
He frames the Left’s behavior in ways
that, explicitly or implicitly, suggests
that they’re involved with potential
violence. One has to ask why would
he get up in front of the Federalist
Society or at Notre Dame and give
fire-and-brimstone, aggressively par-
tisan speeches. I wonder if he wants to
frame himself as both hero and mar-
tyr. It’s bizarre behavior. It’s so unprec-
edented that it seems to be deliberate
and strategic. There is almost no prec-
edent for an attorney general to give
such partisan speeches.