The only thing uglier than an angry Washington is a
fearful Washington. And fear is what’s driving this week’s blitzkrieg of Attorney General
William Barr.
Mr. Barr tolerantly sat through hours of
Democratic insults at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. His
reward for his patience was to be labeled, in the space of a news cycle, a
lawbreaking, dishonest, obstructing hack.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
publicly accused Mr. Barr of lying to Congress, which, she added, is
“considered a crime.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman
Jerrold Nadler said he will move to hold Mr. Barr in contempt unless
the attorney general acquiesces to the unprecedented demand that he submit to
cross-examination by committee staff attorneys.
James Comey, former director of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, lamented that Donald Trump had “eaten” Mr.
Barr’s “soul.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren demands the attorney general
resign. California Rep. Eric Swalwell wants him impeached.
These attacks aren’t about special counsel Robert
Mueller, his report or even the surreal debate over Mr. Barr’s first letter
describing the report. The attorney general delivered the transparency
Democrats demanded: He quickly released a lightly redacted report, which
portrayed the president in a negative light. What do Democrats have to object
to?
Some of this is frustration.
Democrats foolishly
invested two years of political capital in the idea that Mr. Mueller would
prove President Trump had colluded with Russia, and Mr. Mueller left them
empty-handed.
Some of it is personal.
Democrats resent that Mr. Barr
won’t cower or apologize for doing his job.
Some is bitterness that Mr.
Barr is performing like a real attorney general, making the call
against obstruction-of-justice charges rather than sitting back and letting
Democrats have their fun with Mr. Mueller’s obstruction innuendo.
But most of it is likely fear.
Mr.
Barr made real news in that Senate hearing, and while the press didn’t notice,
Democrats did.
The attorney general said he’d already assigned people at the
Justice Department to assist his investigation of the origins of the
Trump-Russia probe.
He said his review would be far-reaching – that he was
obtaining details from congressional investigations, from the ongoing probe by
the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and even from Mr.
Mueller’s work.
Mr. Barr said the investigation wouldn’t focus only on the fall
2016 justifications for secret surveillance warrants against Trump team members
but would go back months earlier.
He also said he’d focus on the infamous
“dossier” concocted by opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and British former
spy Christopher Steele, on which the FBI relied so heavily in its probe.
Mr.
Barr acknowledged his concern that the dossier itself could be Russian
disinformation, a possibility he described as not “entirely speculative.”
He
also revealed that the department has “multiple criminal leak investigations
under way” into the disclosure of classified details about the Trump-Russia
investigation.
