Donald Trump against Montesquieu | International

“The attorney general must ensure that the administration of justice is above and beyond politics,” said William Barr (New York, 1950) in the United States Senate, during your confirmation hearings for that charge. In the year and a half since then, he has devoted himself subtly, hand in hand with President Donald Trump, to rewriting the history of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, which he has referred to as “one of the greatest farces in American history ”and“ sabotage of the presidency ”. He has gone so far as to say that the investigations carried out by his own Department were an exercise in “espionage” and he has opened a criminal investigation into its origins. Instead, on the grounds that it was not “urgent”, he refused to open an investigation into the complaint by the anonymous complainant that would end up giving rise to the impeachment from Trump. He has pressed to be imposed a kinder benevolence than Roger Stone’s own prosecutors asked for, Trump campaign advisor convicted of witness tampering and lying to Congress. And last May 7 it went even further, to drop the charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Adviser, who has twice pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russian diplomats.

On January 15, 2019, Barr, the second attorney general appointed by Trump, arrived at the Capitol for his confirmation hearings. Many Democrats trusted that they were before a defender of the institutions that would contain the excesses of the president. It would take them little time to understand how wrong they were.

Those who knew Barr’s career knew that he had spent decades advocating unlimited executive power. Especially when that power was held by a republican president. Bill Barr’s America, he recently wrote in The Atlantic Donald Ayer, his predecessor as deputy attorney general with George Bush Sr., “is a banana republic where everyone is subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen.”

In the United States, the attorney general is the head of the Justice Department, equivalent to a minister. His duties include ensuring that federal laws are followed (and if not, opening investigations to bring the case to justice), giving the president legal advice, giving opinions in federal cases and representing the Government in judicial matters. Following the Watergate scandal, Democrats and Republicans understood that it was necessary to strengthen the Justice Department’s political neutrality. Carter, a president far from bombast, introduced reforms to limit presidential power. Among other things, the figure of the general inspectors was created to eliminate fraud and abuse in the Executive. Trump, by the way, has been dedicated to firing inspectors general he does not consider loyal, the last one this Saturday, Steve Linick, assigned to the State Department.

The trend changed again with the election of Reagan in 1980, and Republican control of the Senate after three decades of minority. In 1982 Barr joined the White House legal team and, together with a group of young like-minded jurists, began designing an armor for the executive branch. In the Bush senior campaign, he saw an opportunity to continue the work begun in the Reagan years. He entered the Justice Department, where he soon wrote a memo warning of the threat that Congress posed to the presidency. In 1991 Bush appointed him attorney general.

Following Bill Clinton’s election, Barr fought federal regulation from the private sector, became wealthy, and continued to promote his ideal of society through numerous ultra-conservative religious organizations, such as the Catholic Information Center in Washington, linked to Opus Dei, whose council chaired Barr along with Pat Cipollone, today Trump’s lawyer.

Cipollone was one of the key figures in Barr’s return to the front line of politics, advocating for him before the President. After losing the majority in the House of Representatives in the November 2018 election, amidst the investigation into the Russian plot, Trump forces the resignation of Jeff Sessions and elects Barr for the post of attorney general. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” A frustrated President Trump, unable to make the investigation into the Russian plot disappear, had asked his assistants in 2017, referring to the legendary lawyer who fiercely defended his interests as an entrepreneur. In Barr, defender of the same maximalist conception of executive power, he would end up finding that perfect ally to challenge Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers.

Barr had not been one of the first to embrace trumpism but, like so many others, after his victory defended it with the fury of the convert. Raised in a family that gave the discordant conservative note among the liberal elite of the Upper West Side during the construction of “the great society” by Lyndon Johnson, Barr formed his political ideology in reaction to the progressive consensus that surrounded him. He shares with the president that idea of ​​a lurking left. The offensive to overthrow Trump, first with the Russian plot and then with the impeachment, has harmoniously converged the political interests of one and the other.

Both believe, in a slightly more erudite and sophisticated way in Barr’s case, that any limit to presidential power weakens the country. Each president tries to build a Department of Justice tailored to their legislative priorities. But his critics denounce that Barr’s has become a true political weapon in the hands of Trump.

They have encountered resistance in a part of the judiciary, which zealously defends political independence and service to the law and institutions. The federal judge in charge of the Michael Flynn case has decided to proceed with the case. He has appointed a retired prosecutor to oppose the Justice Department motion and there is even talk of a possible perjury charge. More than 2,000 former Justice Department employees have signed a letter calling for Barr’s resignation and for Congress to censure him for his “repeated assaults on the rule of law.”

The rewriting of the Trump and Barr story is now complete with the construction of a conspiracy narrative, dubbed Obamagate, which points to what is already de facto Trump’s rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. The idea is that, following the Republican victory in 2016, the Justice Department and the FBI of Barack Obama opened an investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia to prevent his arrival at the White House. The truth is that the FBI, despite having material to open the investigation into Russian interference, did not do so until after the elections. “OBAMAGATE!”, Like this, in capital letters and with an exclamation mark, is the tweet that opened the account of President Trump this weekend. On May 7, after announcing the Justice Department’s decision to drop the charges against Flynn, Barr was asked how he believed history would judge his move. “The story is written by the winners,” he replied, “so it largely depends on who writes it.”

–

In EL PAÍS, dozens of journalists work to bring you the most rigorous information and fulfill your public service mission. If you want to support our journalism and enjoy unlimited access, you can do it here for € 1 the first month and € 10 the following month, with no commitment to stay.

Subscribe–