The New York Times - USA (2020-12-07)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALMONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020 N A

WASHINGTON — Attorney
General William P. Barr is consid-
ering stepping down before Presi-
dent Trump’s term ends next
month, according to three people
familiar with this thinking. One
said Mr. Barr could announce his
departure before the end of the
year.
It was not clear whether the at-
torney general’s deliberations
were influenced by Mr. Trump’s
refusal to concede his election loss
or his fury over Mr. Barr’s ac-
knowledgment last week that the
Justice Department uncovered no
widespread voting fraud. In the
ensuing days, the president re-
fused to say whether he still had
confidence in his attorney gen-
eral.
One of the people insisted that
Mr. Barr had been weighing his
departure since before last week
and that Mr. Trump had not af-
fected the attorney general’s
thinking. Another said Mr. Barr
had concluded that he had com-
pleted the work that he set out to
accomplish at the Justice Depart-
ment.
But the president’s public com-
plaints about the election, includ-
ing a baseless allegation earlier
last week that federal law enforce-
ment had rigged the election
against him, are certain to cast a
cloud over any early departure by
Mr. Barr. By leaving early, Mr.
Barr could avoid a confrontation
with the president over his refusal
to advance Mr. Trump’s efforts to
rewrite the election results.
Mr. Barr’s departure would also
deprive the president of a cabinet
officer who has wielded the power
of the Justice Department more
deeply in service of a president’s
political agenda than any attorney
general in a half-century. Con-
versely, it would please some
Trump allies, who have called for
Mr. Barr to step down over his re-
fusal to wade further into Mr.
Trump’s efforts to overturn the
election outcome.
Mr. Barr has not made a final
decision, and the prospect of him
staying on through Jan. 20 re-
mains a possibility, the people fa-
miliar with his thinking cautioned.
Should Mr. Barr step down before
the end of the Trump administra-
tion, the deputy attorney general,
Jeffrey A. Rosen, would be ex-
pected to lead the Justice Depart-
ment until President-elect Joseph

R. Biden Jr. is sworn in.

A Justice Department spokes-

woman declined to comment. The

White House had no comment.

Mr. Barr, 70, is the strongest

proponent of presidential power

to hold the office of attorney gen-

eral since Watergate. Soon after

he was confirmed in February

2019, he gained Mr. Trump’s trust

and his ear. He managed to heal

fissures between the White House

and the Justice Department that

broke open when the president

learned that his campaign was un-

der investigation related to Rus-

sia’s interference in the 2016 elec-

tion.

Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr be-

lieved that the F.B.I. had abused

its power in investigating the

Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

An independent inspector general

has found that the bureau had suf-

ficient reason to open the inquiry

and that senior officials there

acted without political bias in do-

ing so.

But weeks after taking office,

Mr. Barr released a summary of

the report by the special counsel,

Robert S. Mueller III, that a judge

later called distorted and mislead-

ing. He presented it in the best

possible light for Mr. Trump be-

fore the public could read it.

Mr. Barr soon asked John H.

Durham, the U.S. attorney in Con-

necticut, to open an investigation

into the Russia inquiry itself to

seek out any wrongdoing under

the Obama administration.

While that investigation has not

yet produced the kind of results

that Mr. Trump has explicitly said

he would like to see — including

criminal charges against former

President Barack Obama and Mr.

Biden, as well as the former F.B.I.

director James B. Comey — Mr.

Barr has ensured that Mr.

Durham’s work will continue into

the next administration. In Octo-

ber, he secretly appointed Mr.

Durham a special counsel as-

signed to seek out any wrongdo-

ing in the course of the Russia in-

vestigation.

Mr. Barr revealed that appoint-

ment last week at the same time

that he said he had not seen evi-

dence that voter fraud had af-

fected the results of the election.

Pairing the Durham announce-

ment with that revelation was

widely seen as an effort to placate

Mr. Trump, who was said to be en-

raged that Mr. Barr had publicly

contradicted him.

Throughout the presidential

campaign, Mr. Barr was among

the loudest voices warning that

mail-in ballots would result in

mass election fraud. He routinely

claimed in speeches and inter-

views that the potential for wide-

spread voter fraud was high and

posed a grave danger. Mr. Barr’s

claims were sometimes false or

exaggerated and were widely re-

futed.

“I don’t have empirical evi-

dence other than the fact that

we’ve always had voting fraud.

And there always will be people

who attempt to do that,” Mr. Barr

said in September. He called his

conclusions “common sense.”

And after the election, Mr. Barr

opened the door to politically

charged election fraud investiga-

tions, authorizing federal pros-

ecutors to investigate “specific al-

legations” of voter fraud before re-

sults were certified. Typically, the

Justice Department waits until af-

ter vote totals are certified to in-

vestigate such suspicions in order

to avoid shaking public confi-

dence in elections.

At the same time, Mr. Barr’s

public appearances dwindled, and

he did not comment on the results

or Mr. Trump’s attempts to over-

turn the outcome. But as the presi-

dent’s legal challenges hit a dead

end, the pressure on Mr. Barr to

speak out increased when Mr.

Trump suggested in an interview

on Nov. 29 that the Justice Depart-

ment and the F.B.I. might have

been “involved” in some sort of

election fraud.

“This is total fraud. And how the

F.B.I. and Department of Justice

— I don’t know, maybe they’re in-

volved — but how people are al-

lowed to get away with this stuff is

unbelievable,” Mr. Trump told the

Fox Business host Maria Bar-

tiromo.

Mr. Barr broke his silence a few

days later, telling The Associated

Press that he had not seen evi-

dence of election fraud on a scale

that would have changed the fact

that Mr. Biden won.

“To date, we have not seen

fraud on a scale that could have ef-

fected a different outcome in the

election,” he said.

With Mr. Barr’s departure, Mr.

Trump would lose the cabinet offi-

cial who has carried out his

agenda on policing, racial unrest,

affirmative action and immigra-

tion. Unlike officials who have pri-

vately denigrated Mr. Trump, de-

partment officials and friends say

that Mr. Barr agrees with most, if

not all, of the president’s posi-

tions, as well as his view that he

was wronged by the Obama ad-

ministration.

Mr. Barr himself has taken um-

brage at the notion that his actions

that helped Mr. Trump’s allies —

reducing a sentencing recommen-

dation for the president’s long-

time friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on

seven felony convictions and

seeking to withdraw the prosecu-

tion of Michael T. Flynn on a

charge of lying to investigators —

were done at the president’s be-

hest. He has publicly and pri-

vately insisted that he would have

made those moves no matter what

because he felt they were right.

When Mr. Barr left the Justice

Department in 1993 after serving

as attorney general under Presi-

dent George Bush, he became the

general counsel of the telecom-

munications company GTE Corp.,

which eventually became Veri-

zon. That stint at the company

ended with a $10.4 million payout

and made him a millionaire many

times over, making it unlikely that

he will take another full-time job

after he leaves the department.

Barr Is Said to Consider Leaving Office Before the End of Trump’s Term

Attorney General William P. Barr, right, said that he had not seen evidence of voting fraud that would alter the election’s outcome.

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

This article is by Katie Benner,
Michael S. Schmidtand Peter
Baker.

The attorney general

angered the president

by contradicting him.

With more than a dozen candi-
dates running for mayor of New
York City, it can be hard to stand
out. A powerful ad can help — es-
pecially one featuring Spike Lee.
Raymond J. McGuire, a Black
business executive trying to posi-
tion himself as the best candidate
to help the city recover from the
pandemic, released a campaign
video last week that introduced
him and his life story to voters.
Mr. McGuire’s campaign launch
also included his first extended in-
terviews as a candidate, a rite of
passage that can be difficult for
those who have never run for of-
fice. Another first-time candidate,
Maya Wiley, a former MSNBC an-
alyst, grappled with the thorny is-
sue of “defunding the police” in an
interview last week.
All the candidates are trying to
find ways to grab voters’ attention
and to raise money ahead of the
June 22 primary. Dianne Morales,
a former nonprofit executive who
is also making her first run for of-
fice, has been raising money over
criticism of an article by The New
York Times that mentioned her
comments about enjoying edible
marijuana.
Here are five highlights from
last week:

Meet Ray McGuire

The 2020 documentary, “Yusuf
Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn,”
about the racially motivated mur-
der of a Black teenager in 1989,
has placed Muta’Ali Muhammad
on many lists of up-and-coming
filmmakers.
Mr. Muhammad was enlisted to
direct Mr. McGuire’s campaign
launch video, and he approached
it as a mini-documentary. Mr. Mc-
Guire and his wife, Crystal Mc-
Crary McGuire, a lawyer and film-
maker who is the executive
producer of the ad, reached out to
Mr. Lee and the jazz musician
Wynton Marsalis for help.
The video shows Mr. McGuire,
who is wearing a pair of black and
red Air Jordan 11 Retro sneakers
and exercise gear, jogging
through an empty Times Square.
Mr. Lee narrates over Mr.
Marsalis’s jazz compositions as
the toll of the pandemic unfolds —
a row of refrigerated morgues and
shuttered businesses.
“It’s crazy out here. Bananas,”
Mr. Lee said in one of the ad-libs
he added to the script. “People are
asking, ‘Is this it? Is New York
over?’ ”
Mr. McGuire is introduced as
the man who can fix it before the
video delves into his upbringing in

Dayton, Ohio, by a single mother

who emphasized the importance

of education.

Mark Skidmore, chief executive

of Assemble the Agency, wrote the

jogging script. The crew estimat-

ed Mr. McGuire ran four or five

miles during one day of shooting.

“He’s 63, but he’s in far better

shape than I am,” Mr. Skidmore

said. “We wanted to highlight and

show that this is a guy who has the

energy to run the city.”

McGuire Faces the Local Press

Hours after releasing the video,

Mr. McGuire stepped into the rug-

ged New York City media land-

scape with interviews on WNYC

radio with Brian Lehrer and on

NY1 with Errol Louis.

Mr. Lehrer asked whether his

Wall Street background could

alienate voters.

“I would encourage people to

look at the totality of my lived ex-

periences,” said Mr. McGuire, who

cited his rise from humble begin-

nings.

Mr. McGuire took centrist posi-

tions on taxing the wealthy and

whether landlords should forgive

or reduce rent for small busi-

nesses. Mr. McGuire said that

while wealthy people like him

should pay more in taxes, that

would not be enough to solve the

city’s financial crisis.

“We simply can’t tax our way

out of this,” he told Mr. Louis. “We

need to grow our way out of this.”

Mr. McGuire did not answer a

question about whether he’d keep

Dermot F. Shea as police commis-

sioner, and he blamed being busy

with family and work for his fail-

ure to vote in both the primary

and general elections during the

last three mayoral contests.

Wiley and ‘Defund the Police’

Ms. Wiley has made a name for

herself as a progressive expert on

criminal justice issues and served

from 2016 to 2017 as the chair-

woman of the city’s police

oversight agency.

But she has been careful not to

fully embrace the phrase “defund

the police.” The movement is pop-

ular among protesters, but could

be viewed as too liberal among

moderate voters.

In an interview on MSNBC, Ms.

Wiley was asked about President

Obama’s recent comments that

“defund the police” was a “snappy

slogan” that could alienate “a big

audience.” She said Democrats

should focus on policies to im-

prove policing and public safety.

“We should not get caught up in

slogans — we should get caught

up in solutions,” she said last

week.

When Ms. Wiley was asked di-

rectly if she wants to “defund the

police” in an interview with Mr.

Lehrer, she was cautious with her

words.

“I subscribe to the principles of

what so many demonstrators, me

among them, were marching for

this summer,” she said. “And that

is that we have to invest in our

communities that are being over-

policed.”

Morales Pushes Back on Criticism

When Ms. Morales professed her

love for edible marijuana at the

first candidate forum in October, it

was one of the most memorable

quotes of the night.

All of the candidates were asked

if they smoked marijuana, and few

admitted to using it. Ms. Morales’s

answer — “I prefer edibles.” —

seemed human and refreshingly

candid.

The answers were also illumi-

nating because New York State is

likely to legalize marijuana soon,

and the next mayor could shape

the city’s approach.

But Ms. Morales said the Times’

decision to include her comment

about edible marijuana in an in-

teractive slide show about the

candidates was racist and an “at-

tempt to summarily dismiss me.”

There is more to her story: She

is an Afro-Latina single mother

who led an anti-poverty nonprof-

it; she earned graduate degrees

from Harvard University and Co-

lumbia University; and she is run-

ning on progressive policies.

Her campaign launch video fo-

cused on the obstacles she faced

as a woman of color. “When I think

back to the moments in my life-

time that may have led me here, I

think of the city systems that

failed my family,” she said.

The Field Continues to Expand

Another candidate jumped in the

race last week: Isaac Wright Jr., a

lawyer who was wrongfully con-

victed decades ago, and helped

other inmates with their cases.

The television show “For Life”

on ABC is based on Mr. Wright’s

story, and he is a producer on the

show, along with the rapper 50

Cent. Mr. Wright said he wants to

“address the racial, economic, en-

vironmental and educational in-

justices that plague our city’s in-

stitutions.”

The field could continue to

grow. Others rumored to be con-

sidering a run: Andrew Yang, the

former tech executive and presi-

dential candidate; Christine

Quinn, the former City Council

speaker; and Representative Max

Rose from Staten Island, who lost

his seat in November’s election.

5 Highlights of New York’s Mayoral Race

By JEFFERY C. MAYS

and EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS

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