Lindsey Graham has no idea what he’s doing
Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News on Monday night, complaining, “You’re not trying to uphold the rule of law. You’re trying to take a good man down because you hate Trump.” Graham was referring to Attorney General William Barr and using a tired, twisted defense. It’s like saying you want the police to find the people who vandalized your home because you hate them–not because they engaged in wrongdoing. The silver lining is that when sycophants like Graham resort to arguing “you’re doing this because you hate Trump,” it means they’re losing bigly.
Late last week, Barr claimed in an interview with ABC News that he won’t be bullied and that Trump’s tweets are making it “impossible” for him to do his job. Whether or not this was an act of staged resistance, Barr’s comments backfired. Exactly what job Barr is doing has come under increasing scrutiny as a groundswell of pushback against Barr’s mockery of justice is underway. Former U.S. Attorney and DOJ official Harry Litman chillingly described the unprecedented nature of the situation in a tweet Monday night: “This is mind-blowing. I’ve never heard of anything like it. We are in full on crisis mode.”
On Sunday, DOJ alumni published an open letter, which now bears over 2,000 signatures, calling for Barr to resign after interfering in the sentencing of Roger Stone, who was convicted in November on seven counts of witness tampering and lying to Congress. Yesterday, the Federal Judges Association, an independent group of over 1,000 jurists, revealed it is calling an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis. According to an analysis by the Washington Post of news articles since the association’s founding in 1982, there has been “nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.”
At Barr’s confirmation hearing a mere 13 months ago, he claimed, “Nothing could be more destructive of our system of government, of the rule of law or the Department of Justice as an institution than any toleration of political interference with the enforcement of the law.” He went on to say that Americans need to be sure that there are places in government “where the rule of law, not politics, holds sway and where they will be treated fairly based solely on the facts and the evenhanded application of the law. The Department of Justice must be that place.” Through these words and his subsequent actions, Barr has crafted a convincing case for his immediate resignation.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month