In the furor around Attorney General William Barr’s testimony on the Mueller report before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, one issue has flown under the radar: the potential for Barr to undermine more than a dozen ongoing criminal matters that sprang from the special counsel’s investigation if they could harm President Donald Trump.
Given Barr’s own statements and actions with respect to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his credibility and his independence are in doubt. For that reason, he must recuse himself from any ongoing investigations involving evidence referred by the special counsel’s office.
Barr has made clear that he believes it is appropriate for an attorney general to protect the president’s political interests. During Barr’s confirmation hearing in January, I asked him about anti-immigration initiatives he developed the last time he was attorney general. He had said in a 1996 speech that he thought these immigration restrictions would “put the Bush campaign ahead of the Democrats on the immigration issue, which I saw as extremely important in 1992.” He had gone on to say, “I felt that a strong policy on immigration was necessary for the president to carry California, a key state in the election.”
I told the attorney general that this was a revealing statement about a political agenda. His response was, “Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” He went on to tell me how he thinks the attorney general plays three roles: enforcing the law, serving as legal adviser to the president, and playing a policy role in which, he said, “It’s OK to propose policies that are politically advantageous.”
Of course, the attorney general wears more than one hat, but he has a solemn obligation to oversee ongoing investigations without fear or favor. I don’t know what role Barr thought he was playing on March 24 when he released his four-page summary of Mueller’s report on Russian election interference and when he gave his infamous news conference on April 18. But it is hard to view his actions as anything other than spinning the Mueller report to put Trump in the most politically advantageous light. Barr has stepped over the line by politicizing this critical law enforcement investigation to serve the president’s interests.
The more we learn about Barr’s handling of the Mueller investigation, the more cause there is for concern.
First it was Barr’s 19-page memo in June 2018 demonstrating his bias on obstruction of justice.
Then it was his decision to make a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction by Trump, despite Mueller’s view that such a judgment was not appropriate, given the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion barring indictment of a sitting president.
Then it was his deliberately misleading testimony before Congress about the Mueller report, including his incendiary claims that the Justice Department was “spying” on the Trump campaign even though he had “no specific evidence” to support the claim.
Most recently, it was his admission to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week that he had not reviewed all of Mueller’s evidence before making his conclusions.
It is clear that Barr is once again trying to advance the president’s political interests, like he did in 1992. That’s not what our nation needs from the attorney general, who is supposed to be the top law enforcement officer for all Americans, not the president’s lawyer.
Which leads me to an immediate concern: According to the Mueller report, the special counsel’s office “periodically identified evidence of potential criminal activity that was outside of the scope of the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction” and referred that evidence to other Justice Department components. There are 14 such referrals referenced in the Mueller report, 12 of which are redacted.
Barr has repeatedly proved he should have no hand in any of them. For the sake of the rule of law and to make sure these investigations are carried out independent of political considerations, he must recuse.
Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat, represents Illinois in the U.S. Senate.