Bill Barr isn’t going to like this one bit
The Trump administration is desperately pushing the false narrative that the coronavirus is just a hoax to bring down Donald Trump, all while trying to downplay the very real threat and their own appalling response to it. This narrative might work if it wasn’t just another variation of a story they’ve used a hundred times before without much to show for it. While he’s frantically trying to allay fears about the virus, purely to calm investors while hoping that somehow the pandemic will take care of itself, he’s got a whole other problem on his hands.
On Friday, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler announced an investigation into whether or not the Trump administration decided to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his political rivals, and he decided to call out Bill Barr specifically in a letter, referring to Barr’s infamous complaint about Trump’s tweets making it impossible to do his job.
We figured it was an act then, but weren’t quite sure what political consequences it would hold. Now, Nadler has suddenly taken an interest in Roger Stone’s sentence as well. He also sought documents pertaining to the cases against Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort and the merger with AT&T and Time Warner.
We’ve seen Donald Trump withstand some pretty steep scandals and somehow manage to survive them politically, but this time his administration is facing two serious crises at the same time. The fallout from a bungled coronavirus response that’s already starting panic could seriously wound his administration and make it hard to fight against another scandal where they’re clearly in the wrong. This makes running in 2020 much more difficult for him regardless of whether or not Barr decides to participate in the investigation.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making