Barr must be impeached...

[pbmus]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1130585037345312769.html

Democracy according to Barr:
-DOJ can't prosecute POTUS
-DOJ will investigate those who investigate POTUS
-DOJ should investigate POTUS's political rivals
-Congress can't investigate POTUS
-Congress can't request the investigative record
-Congress can't subpoena POTUS's advisors
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-Congress can't conduct oversight without the executive branch's permission
-POTUS can't commit obstruction unless he's guilty of the crime being investigated (even if obstruction obscures the guilt), despite the fact that DOJ routinely brings such charges
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-The AG can ignore ethics officials whenever he disagrees with them
-presidential advisors don't waive any privilege or immunity by giving testimony to criminal investigators (even though the investigators could use their testimony against them in open court)
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-presidential advisors don't waive any privilege or immunity by making public statements on a subject (meaning that telling the entire world what the president said does not entitle Congress to question you)
-there is no crime exception to Barr's rules
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is the arbiter of when Congress can invoke "inherent contempt"
-OLC can overrule both a House committee chairman and a federal district court
-OLC's past opinions have precedential effect, except when their about nepotism
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-past presidents failing to assert privilege or immunity have no bearing on the present, but Congress failing assert its authority in the past is relevant
-there's no irony in citing Nixon era examples
-POTUS can "direct" a former appointee not to testify
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-implicit threats are fun: "The failure to recognize the extension of the President's immunity from compelled congressional testimony to senior advisors would call into question the well-established extension of derivative immunity to congressional staffers"
Barrs Rules (cont.)
[the translation for that last item is: "If you say you can make our guy testify, maybe we'll have to reconsider the doctrine that says we can't prosecute your guys for their legislative work"]
Barr's Rules (cont.)
-there are very few relevant examples, but they happened far apart, so we can call them "longstanding"

Here's today's opinion that articulates many of Barr's rules for democracy:
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6018…
McConnell/Graham supplement to Barr's rules:
-POTUS can fire the FBI Director and Attorney General for allowing him to be investigated, and we'll be happy to confirm replacements for both of them
-the Senate should investigate those who investigate POTUS
Senate supplement (cont.)
-It's ok if the new AG auditioned for the job by writing a memo espousing a fringe theory
-We don't need to compel witnesses who provided inconsistent testimony to explain themselves in a public hearing
Senate supplement (cont.)
-No need for oversight of a norm-shattering admin that uses private email for internal communications (and message-deleting apps to secretly deal with foreign powers), but we need to investigate the emails of an official who's been out of govt for 6 yrs
Senate supplement (cont.)
-vague expressions of general concern are sufficient to offset the erosion of congressional authority
-it's appropriate for a chairman of a committee to urge the president's son to plead the Fifth if a different committee compels him to testify
Senate supplement (cont.)
-we have no objection to a president using emergency authorities to do end runs around the budget power of Congress
-we have no problem with novel legal opinions expanding executive power at the expense of the legislative branch
Even the Judicial Branch is getting in on the act. Here's a judicial supplement to these rules:
-we can freely ignore past precedent if we disagree with it, without making a compelling case for changed circumstances
If all of this doesn't scare you, wait until OLC (God forbid) issues an opinion on the Insurrection Act, the scope of emergency powers, or the conduct of the 2020 election.
But just to inject a little hope into this Pandora's box, here's some good news today:

Ronald Klain
✔
@RonaldKlain
One important thing here: many pundits have been saying that if the House Dems fight Trump in court, Trump will simply be able to run out the clock. This ruling shows that the courts can act quickly, and are likely to do so.
Kyle Cheney
✔
@kyledcheney
BREAKING: Judge shoots down Trump effort to overturn House Oversight Committee subpoena for Trump financial documents. Judge also denies requested stay of ruling.

6,641
4:13 PM - May 20, 2019
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2,048 people are talking about this

[wryter2000]

1. Yup

He needs to have his feet held to the fire. Start with him and then move on to Mnuchin.

[UniteFightBack]

2. He is very dangerous. Where the fuck are the DOJ Patriots? They cannot like what they are hearing

from Barr. I want the lid to blow off this.

[mopinko]

3. imho, we best take him out first.

so much would come out, it might spark a wave of resignations, and might loosen a few tongues.

[bluestarone]

4. I do leave this to our leaders BUT

MY opinion is I really feel that we need to attack RUMPS minions!! with a PASSION!! Wherever we can!

[Kid Berwyn]

5. Guy's Big Oil is Back!

Bill Barr: The “Cover-Up General”

"At the center of the criticism is the chief artic­ulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"

by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019
and The Village Voice, October 27, 1992

“Attorney General William Barr is the Best Reason to Vote for Clinton”

Excerpt....

SON OF THE CIA

It was 21 years ago, in 1971, that I first encountered William Barr. Both of us were working for the CIA at the time, he as a novice China analyst, I as a member of the agency’s Vietnam task force. Jovial and un­assuming, he took his cues easily from an overly politicized office chief. It was a to­ken of things to come.

Three years before, we had brushed shoulders unknowingly on Columbia Uni­versity’s roiling campus. Both of us were on the other side of the barricades as antiwar demonstrations there blasted our genera­tion into a decade of rage. Barr, a conserva­tive student spokesman, preached tough­ness to the university administration, of which his father, then dean of the engineer­ing faculty, was a leading light. Years later, this same damn-the-torpedoes zeal would commend Barr to his ultimate father figure, George Bush. When Cuban refugees penned up at an Alabama prison rioted and took hostages in the summer of 1991, depu­ty attorney general Barr ordered the place stormed. Soon afterward, Bush tapped him for the attorney general slot itself.

Barr first met Bush in the CIA. In 1976, having shifted to the agency’s legislative office, he helped write the pap sheets that director Bush used to fend off the Pike and Church committees, the first real embodiments of Congressional oversight of the CIA. Intimates say the experience was for­mative for Barr, turning him into an impla­cable enemy of congressional intrusions on executive prerogative.

“The most radical period I had probably was when I was sort of a moderate Republi­can,” he later acknowledged. Sure enough, Barr stayed safe within conservative clutch­es even after leaving the agency in 1977. Armed with a night-school law diploma, he asked for — and got — Bush’s backing for a clerkship appointment to Malcolm Wilkey of the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Years later, as attorney general, Barr would name Wilkey to investigate the House Banking scandal. Wilkey repayed the favor with a wrenchingly partisan in­quiry. Feeding the press overheated charges of wrongdoing, he scored points off the Democratic Congress just as the adminis­tration itself was being pilloried for its failed economics.

Source...

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/

Chapter and verse since Jimmy Carter crossed paths with the Safari Club,
It’s Big Oil to the Rescue — or — the Seven Sisters Escape Justice Once Again.

[abqtommy]

6. A Smug Thug Barr impeachment

will be a good beginning!