If there were an award for worst attorney general of the Trump administration, Bill Barr would win it. Even with Jeff Sessions in the running.
That’s Molly Jong-Fast’s take, anyway, and Elie Honig, CNN legal analyst and author of the new book about Barr called Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department, agrees.
“Jeff Sessions has, I hate to say it, an advantage over Bill Barr, because at least Jeff Sessions did the right thing. He recused himself. He pulled himself off the Mueller investigation. Bill Barr’s conflict of interest, by the way, was way more obvious than Jeff Sessions’,” says Honig.
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Honig came on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to talk about all the ways that Barr failed as AG and in general, and they are extensive, as is his extremist past (and present).
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The first, and worst, says Honig, is the Mueller report.
“I think Bill Barr single-handedly saved Donald Trump from consequences on Mueller by lying to us all about the report. Then by withholding the report from the public people,” he says.
Then, there’s the Big Lie: “[Barr] said that the DOJ had a case involving 1700 fraudulent ballots. It turned out the next day that it was not a DOJ case. And it involved one fraudulent ballot. The DOJ had to issue an embarrassing correction walk-back memo.”
There are also things Honig shares about Barr that make him even more egregious. Like how he’s basically an extremist, lawfully and religiously.
Plus! Honig also tells Molly about why he’s not happy with Merrick Garland (“[With] respect to accountability for the Trump administration, he’s doing almost literally nothing”) and what he thinks about the possibility of Donald Trump going to jail.
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