On Monday, writing for MSNBC, analyst Steve Benen tore into former Attorney General William Barr for releasing a book going after former President Donald Trump — when just two years earlier, he had eagerly worked with his former boss to weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies.
"Barr’s critique appears largely unreserved, writing that Trump likely would’ve won a second term if he’d been capable of 'moderating even a little of his pettiness,'" wrote Benen. "As for the former president’s brazen lying about his 2020 defeat, Barr’s book argues, 'The election was not ‘stolen.’ Trump lost it.' The former attorney general is now convinced that Trump 'cared only about one thing: himself. Country and principle took second place.'"
Though Barr resigned over Trump's efforts to overturn the election just weeks before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, his tenure up to that point had been defined by highly controversial moves politicizing Justice Department policy. Most famously, one of his first acts as attorney general was to distort the findings of former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe on Russia to make it seem like Mueller had exonerated Trump, when that in fact wasn't the case.
"Indeed, he may have no use for Trump’s election lies now, but in the recent past, Barr was only too pleased to peddle absurd election conspiracy theories of his own," wrote Benen, referencing Barr's baseless assertion in June 2020 that foreign governments could create fake ballots to throw the election. "It was part of a multi-year effort in which Barr, to a degree unseen in the post-Watergate era, politicized federal law enforcement and too often aligned the Justice Department with the White House’s partisan agenda. On his way out the door, Barr even wrote an over-the-top resignation letter — delivered at a time at which other Justice Department officials were still fighting the good fight in support of democracy — in which he celebrated the president he’s now denouncing."
"I can appreciate why the Republican lawyer is eager, if not desperate, to rehabilitate his image, but the fact remains that Barr went along with Trump’s dangerous nonsense until it no longer suited his purposes," concluded Benen. "The former attorney general’s record chases after him like cans tied to his bumper, and his book doesn't cut the string."
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