âBy July 2019 ... federal prosecutors determined that no additional people would be charged alongside [Michael] Cohen. ... [Y]our apparent decision to pursue criminal charges where federal authorities declined to do so requires oversight....â
They were furious that Bragg would prosecute Trump for a crime that the federal Department of Justice had already decided in 2019 and announced that they werenât going to pursue.
But why didnât Bill Barrâs Department of Justice proceed after theyâd already put Michael Cohen in prison for a year for delivering the check to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet at least until after the election, and then lying about it? Why didnât they go after the guy who ordered the check written, the guy whoâd had sex with Daniels, the guy whose run for the presidency was hanging in the balance?
Why didnât the Department of Justice at least investigate (they have a policy against prosecuting a sitting president) the then-presidentâs role in the crime they put Cohen in prison for but was directed by, paid for, and also committed by Donald Trump?
Turns out, Geoffrey Berman â the lifelong Republican and U.S. Attorney appointed by Trump to run the prosecutorâs office at the Southern District of New York â wrote a book, Holding the Line, published in September, 2022, about his experiences during that era.
In it, he came right out and accused his boss Bill Barr of killing the federal investigation into Trumpâs role of directing and covering up that conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. Had Barr not done that, Trump could have been prosecuted in January of 2021, right after he left office. And Jim Jordan couldnât complain that Alvin Bragg was pushing a case the feds had decided wasnât worth it.
As The Washington Post noted when the book came out:
âHe [Berman] says Barr stifled campaign finance investigations emanating from the Cohen case and even floated seeking a reversal of Cohenâs conviction â just like Barr would later do with another Trump ally, Michael Flynn. (Barr also intervened in the case of another Trump ally, Roger Stone, to seek a lighter sentence than career prosecutors wanted.)â
Which is why Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg had to pick up the case, if the crime was to be exposed and prosecuted.
After all, this crime literally turned the 2016 election to Trump. Without it, polling shows and political scientists argue, Hillary Clinton would have been our president for at least four years and Trump would have retired into real estate obscurity.
But Bill Barr put an end to Bermanâs investigation, according to Berman. The DOJ pretended to be investigating Trump for another few months, then quietly announced they werenât going to continue the investigation. The news media responded with a shrug of the shoulders and America forgot that Trump had been at the center of Cohenâs crime.
In 2023, the New York Times picked up Bill Barrâs cover story and ran with it, ignoring Bermanâs claims, even though he was the guy in charge of the Southern District of New York. The article essentially reported that Main Justice wouldnât prosecute because Cohen wouldnât testify to earlier crimes, Trump mightâve been ignorant of the law, and that the decision was made by prosecutors in New York and not by Barr.
Incomplete testimony and ignorance of the law have rarely stopped prosecutors in the past from a clear case like this one appears to be (Trump signed the check and Cohen had a recording of their conversation, after all), but the story stuck and the Times ran with it.
In contrast, Berman wrote:
âWhile Cohen had pleaded guilty, our office continued to pursue investigations related to other possible campaign finance violations [including by Trump]. When Barr took over in February 2019, he not only tried to kill the ongoing investigations butâincrediblyâsuggested that Cohenâs conviction on campaign finance charges be reversed. Barr summoned Rob Khuzami in late February to challenge the basis of Cohenâs plea as well as the reasoning behind pursuing similar campaign finance charges against other individuals [including Trump]. âŚ
âThe directive Barr gave Khuzami, which was amplified that same day by a follow-up call from OâCallaghan, was explicit: not a single investigative step could be taken, not a single document in our possession could be reviewed, until the issue was resolved. âŚ
âAbout six weeks later, Khuzami returned to DC for another meeting about Cohen. He was accompanied by Audrey Strauss, Russ Capone, and Edward âTedâ Diskant, Caponeâs co-chief. Barr was in the room, along with Steven Engel, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and others from Main Justice.â
Summarizing the story, Berman wondered out loud exactly why Bill Barr had sabotaged extending their investigation that could lead to an indictment of Trump when he left office:
âBut Barrâs posture here raises obvious questions. Did he think dropping the campaign finance charges would bolster Trumpâs defense against impeachment charges? Was he trying to ensure that no other Trump associates or employees would be charged with making hush-money payments and perhaps flip on the president? Was the goal to ensure that the president could not be charged after leaving office? Or was it part of an effort to undo the entire series of investigations and prosecutions over the past two years of those in the presidentâs orbit (Cohen, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn)?â
In retrospect, the answer appears to be, âAll of the above.â
And that wasnât Barrâs only time subverting justice while heading the Justice Department. Berman says he also ordered John Kerry investigated for possible prosecution for violating the Logan Act (like Trump is doing now!) by engaging in foreign policy when not in office.
Barr even killed a federal investigation into Turkish bankers, after Turkish dictator ErdoÄan complained to Trump.
Most people know that when the Mueller investigation was completed â documenting ten prosecutable cases of Donald Trump personally engaging in criminal obstruction of justice and witness tampering to prevent the Mueller Report investigators from getting to the bottom of his 2016 connections to Russia â Barr buried the report for weeks.
He lied about it to America and our news media for almost a full month, and then released a version so redacted itâs nearly meaningless. (Merrick Garland, Barrâs heir to the AG job, is still hiding large parts of the report from the American people, another reason President Biden should replace him.)
While shocking in its corruption, as I noted here last month, this was not Bill Barr's first time playing cover-up for a Republican president whoâd committed crimes that could rise to the level of treason against America.
Heâs the exemplar of the âold GOPâ that helped Nixon cut a deal with South Vietnam to prolong the War so he could beat Humphrey in 1968; worked with Reagan in 1980 to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for holding the hostages to screw Jimmy Carter; and stole the 2000 election from Al Gore by purging 94,000 Black people from the voter rolls in Jeb Bushâs Florida.
Instead of todayâs ânew GOP,â exemplified by Nazi marches, alleged perverts like Matt Gaetz, and racist rhetoric against immigrants, Barrâs âold GOPâ committed their crimes wearing $2000 tailored suits and manipulating the law to their advantageâŚand still are.
For example, back in 1992, the first time Bill Barr was U.S. Attorney General, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as âCoverup-General Barrâ because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bushâs involvement in Reaganâs scheme to steal the 1980 election through what the media euphemistically called âIran-Contra.â
On Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra âscandal.â (see the bottom of this article)
Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.
But Bush Seniorâs biggest concern wasnât that heâd have to leave the White House to retire back to one of his million-dollar mansions in Connecticut, Maine, or Texas: instead, he was worried that he may face time in a federal prison after he left office, a concern nearly identical to what Richard Nixon faced when he decided to resign to avoid prosecution.
Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on Bush and Reagan, and Bushâs private records, subpoenaed by the independent counselâs office, were the key to it all.
Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986 to investigate the Iran-Contra activities of the Reagan administration and determine if crimes had been committed.
Was the criminal Iran-Contra conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan said on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to an obscure hostage-taking in Lebanon?
Or had it started in the 1980 presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter with treasonous collusion with the Iranians, as the then-president of Iran asserted? Who knew what, and when? And what was George H.W. Bushâs role in it all?
In the years since then, the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has gone on the record saying that the Reagan campaign reached out to Iran to hold the hostages in exchange for weapons.
âAyatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan,â President Bani-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor in 2013, âhad organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the âOctober Surprise,â which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.â
That wouldnât have been just an impeachable and imprisonable crime: it was every bit as much treason as when Richard Nixon blew up LBJâs 1968 peace talks with North and South Vietnam to win that Novemberâs election against Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Walsh had zeroed in on documents that were in the possession of Reaganâs former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who all the evidence showed was definitely in on the deal, and President Bushâs diary that could corroborate it.
Elliott Abrams had already been convicted of withholding evidence about it from Congress, and he may have even more information, too, if it could be pried out of him before he went to prison. But Abrams was keeping mum, apparently anticipating a pardon.
This was the moment the âold GOPâ was at the height of its power and prestige, and Bush and Barr werenât about to let it be exposed for the criminal enterprise that the âparty of Lincolnâ had become.
Weinberger, trying to avoid jail himself, was preparing to testify that Bush knew about the deal to hold the hostages and even participated in it, and Walsh had already, based on information heâd obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. He was also again hot on the trail of Abrams.
So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr â the respectable scion of the âold GOPâ â and asked his advice.
At that point Barr, along with Bush, was already up to his eyeballs in cover-ups of other shady behavior by the Reagan administration.
Safire had started referring to Barr as âCoverup-Generalâ in the midst of another scandal â Bush illegally selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein â because the Attorney General was already covering up for Bush, Weinberger, and others in the Reagan administration with a scandal the newspapers called âIraqgate.â
Ironically, that illegal sale of weapons to Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s and early 1990s was cited by George W. Bush, Bushâs son, as part of his justification for illegally invading Iraq in 2003.
On October 19, 1992, Safire wrote in The New York Times of Barrâs unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into Iraqgate:
âWhy does the Coverup-General resist independent investigation? Because he knows where it may lead: to Dick Thornburgh, James Baker, Clayton Yeutter, Brent Scowcroft and himself [the people who organized the sale of WMD to Saddam]. He vainly hopes to be able to head it off, or at least be able to use the threat of firing to negotiate a deal.â
Now, just short of two months later, Bush was asking Barr for advice on how to avoid another very serious charge in the Iran-Contra crimes they committed to defeat Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. How, he wanted to know, could they shut down Walshâs investigation before Walshâs lawyers got their hands on Bushâs diary?
In April of 2001, safely distant from the swirl of D.C. politics, the University of Virginiaâs Miller Center was compiling oral presidential histories, and interviewed Barr about his time as AG in the Bush White House. They brought up the issue of the Weinberger pardon, which put an end to the Iran-Contra investigation, and Barrâs involvement in it.
Turns out, Barr was right in the middle of it.
âThere were some people arguing just for [a pardon for] Weinberger, and I said, âNo, in for a penny, in for a pound,ââ Barr told the interviewer. âI went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others.â
Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans were with family instead of watching the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.
America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in the Iran-Contra hostages-for-weapons scandal, and Democrats had been talking about treason, impeachment, or worse.
The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction, three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution in the case that lost Jimmy Carter the White House. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.
The second paragraph of the Times story by David Johnston laid it out:
âMr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinbergerâs private notes that contain references to Mr. Bushâs endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.â (emphasis added)
History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, the âold GOPâsâ go-to guy was Bill Barr.
For William Safire, Iran-Contra was dĂŠjĂ vu all over again. Four months earlier, referring to Iraqgate (Bushâs criminally selling WMDs to Iraq), Safire opened his article, titled âJustice [Department] Corrupts Justice,â by writing:
âU.S. Attorney General William Barr, in rejecting the House Judiciary Committeeâs call for a prosecutor not beholden to the Bush Administration to investigate the crimes of Iraqgate, has taken personal charge of the cover-up.â
Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted.
âMr. Barr,â wrote Safire in The New York Times in August of 1992, â...could face prosecution if it turns out that high Bush officials knew about Saddam Husseinâs perversion of our Agriculture export guarantees to finance his war machine.â
He added:
âThey [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.â
Earlier in Bushâs administration, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate, as Safire repeatedly documented in the Times.
In December, Barr helped Bush block indictments from another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that Reagan or George H.W. Bush would be held to account for Iran-Contra.
Walsh, wrote Johnston for the Times on Christmas Eve, âplans to review a campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush.â The diary would be the smoking gun that would nail Bush to the scandal.
âBut,â noted the Times, âin a single stroke, Mr. Bush [at Barrâs suggestion] swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walshâs effort, which began in 1986.â
And Walsh didnât take it lying down. The Times report noted that:
âMr. Walsh bitterly condemned the Presidentâs action, charging that âthe Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.ââ
Independent Counsel Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented:
â{E]vidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.â
The phrase âhighest rankingâ officials almost certainly included Reagan, Bush, and Barr himself.
Walsh had been fighting to get those documents ever since 1986, when he was appointed and Reagan still had two years left in office. Bushâs and Weinbergerâs refusal to turn them over, Johnston noted in the Times, could have, in Walshâs words:
â[F]orestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reaganâ through a pattern of âdeception and obstruction.â
Back in the 1990s, Barr successfully covered up the involvement of two Republican presidents â Reagan and Bush â in two separate and impeachable âhigh crimes,â one of them almost certainly treason committed just to win a presidential election.
And now we learn he apparently went so far as to cover up Trumpâs involvement with Russia (the Mueller Report), and his scheme to fix the 2016 election by shutting up Stormy Daniels, Karen MacDougal, and the Trump Tower doorman.
And Barrâs apparently still at it! Just last month, The New York Times revealed how Barr apparently inserted himself into a Justice Department criminal investigation of a billion-dollar corporation for allegedly corruptly hiding their income offshore to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Republicans claim to be the party of law and order. What a pathetic joke.
