A common criticism among Democrats during the Trump era has been that Republicans simply don’t care about facts, that they live in an alternative reality where facts don’t matter.
Many of the same people, however, have shown a striking immunity to the facts when it comes to President Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, who announced his resignation yesterday. According to Democrats, Barr has shattered norms and rewritten rules at the Department of Justice, brazenly politicizing the DOJ to further Trump’s political ambitions.
This narrative depends upon the amplification and distortion of some facts and the diminution and nullification of others.
Barr has, of course, done things as Attorney General that furthered the Trump administration’s interests. That’s what Senate-confirmed cabinet officials are expected to do. He has, for example, advanced Trump’s agenda on immigration reform, criminal justice and judicial confirmations. And Barr agrees with Trump and many others that the government’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and associated prosecutions of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone included meaningful mistakes and irregularities.
But Barr has also, repeatedly, refused to further Trump’s most important political objectives.
Despite incessant pressure from Trump to do so, Barr did not indict a single Trump political opponent. Barr’s DOJ did, however, indict Trump’s former campaign manager and senior advisor Steve Bannon.
Barr, moreover, has publicly pushed back against Trump’s tweeting about active criminal cases and openly and expressly rejected Trump’s advocacy for indicting Joe Biden and Barack Obama during the presidential campaign.
And in stark contrast to Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Barr has steered clear of numerous other major controversies. Unlike most Republicans, Barr did not openly support Trump during the impeachment process. He has not supported President Trump’s post-election litigation; to the contrary, he publicly refuted Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. And, we now know, Barr did not publicly disclose before the election that the DOJ has been investigating Hunter Biden’s financial dealings for the last two years. This is, of course, precisely the public disclosure that Trump so fervently sought from Ukraine that it led to his impeachment.
Bar has, indeed, consistently either refused to endorse or flat out repudiated Trump’s most important political initiatives.
Despite the mountain of contradictory evidence, many Democrats persist, to this day, with the narrative that William Barr is simply President Trump’s political operative masquerading as an Attorney General. The facts, apparently, don’t matter.
William Cooper has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner, USA Today, Orlando Sentinel and Washington Times, among others.
