Trump Responds To Barr

When I posted on the unhappiest-looking guy in public life, William Barr, yesterday, I wasn't aware that Trump and his people would respond to Barr's Friday comments about the Mar-a-Lago raid. As it turns out, their response is remarkably substantive, and it actually throws the question back to Barr. (The photo above is from yesterday's story at the Epoch Times on the response; it was taken at the event on June 1, 2020 in which Trump and other officials walked from the White House to the burned-out St John's Episcopal Church across the park following a BLM riot. You can see how on board Barr was with the event, although in hindsight, the walk, simply displaying support for our institutions in the face of disorder, was entirely appropriate.)

The Epoch Times story notes,

“I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they could be taken out of the government, away from the government, if they’re classified,” [Barr, ] who was attorney general during the Trump and George H.W. Bush administrations, said during an appearance on Fox News.

“I frankly am skeptical of this claim that ‘I declassified everything,’ because, frankly, I think it’s highly improbable and second, if in fact, he stood over scores of boxes not really knowing what was in them, and said ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse, and show such recklessness that it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”

Trump publicly ordered in October 2020 the “total declassification” of “any and all documents” related to the U.S. investigation into alleged Russia-Trump collusion, as well as all documents related to the use of a private email server by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

However, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said in a sworn declaration filed in court shortly after that the order did not “require the declassification or release of any particular documents” and that Trump delegated the declassification to Barr, whose department ran the shoddy Russia-Trump investigation. The Department of Justice also said it was told as much by the White House. Trump recently pointed to a Jan. 19, 2021, memorandum he issued declassifying other documents.

In other words, it was onto Barr to declassify documents in response to Trump's specific order, and if in Barr's view they hadn't been, it was Barr's fault. It's worth noting that nobody yet knows exactly what the Justice Department was after in the Mar-a-Lago raid, but there has been speculation, founded among other things on leaks from intelligence officials, that the DOJ wanted Russiagate information. According to Newsweek on August 17,

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago last Monday was specifically intended to recover Donald Trump's personal "stash" of hidden documents, two high-level U.S. intelligence officials tell Newsweek.

To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president's residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump's private hoard, agents went into Trump's residence on the pretext that they were seeking all government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize.

. . . The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges.

When Trump left the White House in January 2021, many of the normal processes of transition were not followed, especially because the president would not admit that he had lost the election or that he would be leaving office. As a result, we now know, some 42 boxes of documents were shipped to Mar-a-Lago by mistake: officials papers under U.S. law, which the National Archives is supposed to take custody of and catalog.

However, the Presidential Records Act that gives the Archives authority over the documents is not a criminal statute, carries no penalties, and has not been enforced in similar disputes with other ex-presidents.

The question I raised in yesterday's post was how Barr, who has clear class interests with the established wealthy elites and the deep state, could have brought himself to serve as Trump's Attorney General. Trump's response as reported in the Epoch Times link is remarkably generous, all things considered:

Barr was known as a staunch Trump defender after becoming attorney general in 2019 but towards the end of the administration, he publicly diverged from Trump on a number of issues, including alleged election fraud.

In a statement on his Truth Social network after Barr’s comments, Trump said that the former attorney general is a Republican in name only, or a RINO, “who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats.”

“Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else. He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast—Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!” Trump added.

Judging from Barr's facial expression in the June 2020 photo at the top of this post, he'd certainly faded by then. Actually, I doubt if he was ever on board, and I question his motives throughout. In saying Barr just ran out of stamina, Trump was being awfully nice.