William Barr's Memo Makes Compelling Case that Trump Must Be Impeached

[dajoki]

William Barr’s Memo Makes Compelling Case that Trump Must Be Impeached
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/12/20/emmet-flood-steps-in-it-again-william-barrs-memo-makes-compelling-case-that-trump-must-be-impeached/

Back when Emmet Flood got Jeff Sessions replaced with big dick toilet salesman Matt Whitaker, I asked why the normally superb White House Counsel had done something that posed such a likelihood of causing chaos.

Maybe it’s just the Trump effect, in which normally competent people become bumblers in Trump’s aura, or maybe it’s just the unique difficulties of trying to defend the guy, but I think Flood has fucked up again. That’s because of the specific content of a William Barr memo sent to Rod Rosenstein, first reported by WSJ last night. While I’m certain Barr didn’t intend to do so, the memo makes a compelling case that Trump must be impeached.

The memo is long, lacks pagination, and presents an alarming view of unitary executive power. Barr also adopts the logically and ethically problematic stance of assuming, in a memo that states, “I realize I am in the dark about many facts” in the second sentence, that he knows what Mueller is up to, repeating over and over claims about what theory of obstruction he knows Mueller is pursuing.

Yet even before Barr finishes the first page, he states something that poses serious problems for the White House.

Obviously, the President and any other official can commit obstruction in this classic sense of sabotaging a proceeding’s truth-finding function. Thus, for example, if a President knowingly destroys or alters evidence, suborns perjury, or induces a witness to change testimony, or commits any act deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence, then he, like anyone else, commits the crime of obstruction.

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And here’s why I blame this all on Emmet Flood. After it first published, the WSJ subsequently quietly added a sentence (which it has subsequently removed, though it a google search on the sentence still brings up the article) noting that Barr had shared his treatise with “the top lawyer representing the White House in the Mueller probe,” which in context would seem to mean Emmet Flood.

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