Attorney General Bill Barr’s alarming expansion of political control at the DOJ in advance of the election is also a story of corporate capture: a single law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, has a revolving door monopoly on the highest ranks of the Department of Justice that deserves far more scrutiny.
A tight network of former Kirkland lawyers – including Barr, his two highest-ranking deputies, and numerous other top officials – has achieved an extraordinary level of control at the DOJ, and has played a key role in putting the agency to work for the president.
The Kirkland network appears to have provided the political and legal muscle behind one of the DOJ’s most controversial recent moves: its decision to take over the president’s defense in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit by claiming that the president was acting in his official capacity in denying Carroll’s rape allegation. Just prior to that intervention, Barr had installed former Kirkland lawyers – including a longtime partner who was hired by the DOJ in August – into key positions at the Civil Division and its Torts Branch, which is handling the case. Though a federal judge rejected the DOJ’s attempt to get it dismissed, discovery in the case was effectively delayed until after the election, with obvious benefits for Trump.
This pattern of appointments, detailed below for the first time, lends further support to the charge that Barr is running the DOJ as if it is the president’s private law firm; the name of that firm is Kirkland & Ellis.
https://news.littlesis.org/2020/10/30/kirkland-ellis-the-law-firm-behind-the-trump-barr-power-grab-at-the-doj/
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