William Barr took another spin through the news cycle last week, and though it wasn’t anywhere near as uplifting as his star turn before the Jan. 6 committee, you can be sure he came out wearing the identical self-assured smirk he’s long since perfected.
America has long endured attorneys general who’ve demonstrated far less interest in the law or the Constitution than in the political goals of the presidents who appointed them — John Mitchell went to prison for serving Richard Nixon’s nefarious purposes, for example — but Barr might well set new standards for duplicity by the time his total machinations are fully understood.
That effort got a serious boost last week thanks to an investigative piece in The New York Times.
Not content to have delayed and mischaracterized the damning conclusions of the Mueller report into Trump’s extensive Russia connections and their impact on the 2016 election, Barr soon unleashed special counsel John Durham to investigate the investigators, no doubt looking for the so-called deep state operatives who were always out to get the president (and doing a terrible, terrible job).
In the expose by Times reporters Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, rich detail emerges not only on the extent Barr and Durham went to turn up nothing save for two dubious charges that resulted in acquittal, but also on how they came across evidence implicating Trump in a series of questionable international financial dealings. Those allegations, provided by officials in Italy, led to criminal investigation that Barr appears to have allowed everyone to think was homing in on the deep staters instead of on his boss.