The sleaze beneath the elite patina of Republican lawyers involved with the investigation into Trump's family, campaign and administration with the Putin crime family and the cover-up into that is seeping out and it stinks. That is despite the assurances of other lawyers, Republican, of course, but also Democrats, that the lawyers, Rod Rosenstein, William Barr and, yes, Robert Mueller who is close, professionally and personally to both of his fellow Republican lawyers and officials, were men of integrity who you could put your trust in.
Dutifully, that is how the media, largely, covered all of them. That was despite well known reasons to not trust Barr from the time of his service to George H. W. Bush. Especially discrediting was Barr's participation in writing Bush I's pardons which were clearly issued to protect him from criminal involvement in serious crimes including terrorist killings in Central America in the Iran-Contra scandal. That should have been enough for anyone to identify Barr as not only a sleazy lawyer serving a powerful Republican politician, but someone who was willing to lie about it.
Rod Rosenstein, chosen to be Jeff Sessions #2 at the Department of Justice by Donald Trump, reason enough to have your sleaze sensors alerted, soon proved himself to be of dubious character by writing a memo in support of Trump's own admitted cover-up firing of James Comey. I'm no lawyer but . . . no, the right word is probably "so" that was enough to lead me to not trust him despite all of that professional comity as expressed by his fellow connected DC establishment lawyers on talk shows and news interviews.
Robert Mueller, who has the most cred of these three and, who knows, may actually be a man of the integrity attributed to him, has also been a member of the criminal administrations and, after the turn of the new century, Republican regimes. His appointment by Rosenstein after Rosenstein had given the world every reason to not trust him made me skeptical of Mueller's reputation, along with his previous appointments by some of the worst presidents in our history.
Robert Mueller's reported close professional and personal relationship to William Barr, apparently right up to the present, leads me to wonder just how much integrity he could have. The doubts I have about that are magnified because of the known sleaze committed while Barr was as a lawyer, an alleged law man who had used his credentials to enable powerful criminals in getting off. I have my doubts that someone like Robert Mueller would socialize and have warm relations with a minor blue collar wrongdoer who had done far less and whose crimes hadn't harmed nearly as many people, whose real crime was not having elite educational credentials, power, money and a place in the DC-NYC establishment.
And yesterday further reasons we shouldn't trust Barr at all and why Robert Mueller's relationship to him should diminish the automatic trust he's given came out. Barr has lied to Congress, misleading it about serious matters in the past in pretty much the way he seems to be with Robert Mueller's report.
On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the “Black Friday” market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.
Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.
When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.
Read the whole thing and, while you're reading it, remember, this is all stuff that Robert Mueller would have known about for years. It makes his Sphinx act in regard to his report into Trump wrongdoing go from seeming like professional propriety to being something quite a bit less reassuring.
Barr's cover-up shouldn't have to wait years to be exposed, Congress should do everything necessary, if the judiciary is as corrupted with Republican-fascists as Trump is putting his hopes in and, clearly Congressional Republicans along with him, Democrats in the House should use everything it can do to force it into the daylight. I would include forcing Mueller to testify, both in closed session and in open session, as should key members of his investigative staff and others. Barr should be investigated for corruption and, if Rosenstein participates in his cover up, he should be investigated too. I, for the life of me, don't understand how Rosenstein's participation in the Comey firing isn't already the subject of a House investigation.
I am sick and tired of seeing these kinds of people, Barr, Rosenstein, getting away with things far, far worse than would land a working class person, a poor person a person with nothing in prison for years. I'm wouldn't be surprised if Rosenstein and Mueller felt very satisfied by putting people like that in prison even as they socialized and had cordial professional relationships with the likes of William Barr. I don't respect that class of lawyers, and from now on only by those rare figures in that world who show the slightest amount of moral discernment and judgement. This is a symptom of moral rot among the well connected and highly placed. If Robert Mueller is such an exception is something of which I am increasingly skeptical. If the cover up continues, if the Judiciary and Intelligence committees have to subpoena him to appear and blow the lid off of it, if his sense of petty professional propriety is not overcome by the outrageousness of Barr's and Rosenstein's cover up, he has never deserved the reputation given him by his fellow lawyers.
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