In recent days, an apparently only more emboldened-than-ever Trump had a public meltdown about a sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years for his longtime pal Roger Stone. Although the Justice Department claimed that they made their eventual decision to shorten their sentencing recommendation for Stone before the president’s public tirade, it’s not as though they could at all be expected to have made their decision without an awareness of the president’s perspective. He hasn’t exactly kept his disdain for the process a secret at any point. Now, a group of Senate Democrats including two 2020 presidential candidates are calling on Attorney General Bill Barr to resign.
Barr has made a show of publicly claiming that he won’t be influenced in his decision making by anyone, including the president, but those Senate Dems called that assertion “simply not credible.”
They added, in a letter addressed to the Attorney General himself:
‘This is an extraordinary turn of events. It appears to show that you and other top DOJ officials intervened in a clearly political fashion to undermine the administration of justice at the President’s behest in order to protect a well-connected political ally who committed a ‘direct and brazen attack on the rule of law.’
Continuing to address Barr directly and calling the sentencing recommendation lowering for Stone, which they called “a clear violation of your duty to defend fair, impartial and equal justice for all Americans,” the Senators added:
‘As a result, we call on you to resign immediately.’
Besides presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the letter also featured signatories including Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii).
Besides their demand for Barr’s resignation, there’s also new legislation that would prohibit Trump appointees from getting involved in issues related to the president.
Warren explained:
‘This bill would use Congress’ spending authority to protect the rule of law and prevent a corrupt Attorney General from protecting the President’s buddies when they commit crimes to benefit the President.’
Barr’s only de facto response to any criticism has been lax derision for the president’s obsessive tweeting.
He insisted:
‘To have public statements and tweets made about the department… make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity.’
In reality, he is still working to do that job right in line with the president’s explicitly stated wishes. For instance, his specially appointed prosecutor John Durham, who is looking into the origins of the Russia investigation, was reported just this week by The New York Times to be pursuing a conspiracy theory that CIA analysts behind that probe may have themselves concocted the scope of the Russian election meddling. There’s no particular evidence for this theory, and the report noted that it seems based on incompetence regarding how the agencies in question actually operate, but that has not exactly seemed to stop the Barr and Trump goon squad.
