William Barr won’t be laughing about the Mueller report for long
The time has come for the moment of truth. The House Judiciary Committee has approved a subpoena to release the full Mueller Report and related documents. Will Attorney General Barr fight it? Yes. He is no white hat, as we’ve all come to see by now. He was asked what would happen if he was presented a subpoena by the committee. He laughed and said, “We’ll have to follow the law.” Wow. That was funny. It’s even funnier that such satire about following the law came from our own head honcho of the law, our Attorney General.
Jokes aside, it’s no joke that the Mueller report will be awful for Trump and his family. And it’s no joke that if Barr obstructs justice with regard to this report, he could be looking at a stint in prison. But it seems clear he will fight its release. And while it winds its way through the courts, we will see Chairman Jerry Nadler issue more subpoenas, and then even more subpoenas.
Others out there have at least pieces of what ended up going into the full Mueller report, such as the federal prosecutors working for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of New York. It’s doubtful they’ll be so reticent to share their materials with Congress if they’re subpoenaed.
So in the lull before the real action begins, know one thing about Barr. He is a political puppet and a presidential fanboy. In his interview now at the University of Virginia, Miller Center, he answered the question of Haitian boat people being interred at Gitmo. He said, “You want 80,000 Haitians to descend on Florida several months before the election? Come on, give me a break. Governor [Lawton] Chiles, the Democratic Governor, is supporting us in this policy? Florida will go ape. Now if you want to give me Fort something-or-other in Arkansas and let me put them there, I’ll be glad to put them on American soil [laughter].” What Bill Barr finds funny should make the rest of us cry. But I don’t think he’ll be laughing for long.
TR Kenneth is the author of the thriller, A ROOM FULL OF NIGHT. You can read all about her at trkenneth.com and on Twitter