Bill Barr just got caught red handed

| 9:09 am EST February 16, 2020
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When Attorney General Bill Barr brazenly tried to meddle in the Roger Stone criminal case this week, it was widely portrayed as proof that Barr has a magic wand and can do anything he wants, and that it means Donald Trump is now emperor. But that’s not how anything works. Back in the real world, every political action comes with a reaction. It turns out what Barr really did this past week was to put a bullseye on his own back.

Now that the media has a better sense of what kinds of things to look for when it comes to Bill Barr’s antics, it knows more about where to dig for dirt. and those on the inside of government who are outraged by Barr’s latest stunt are more motivated to leak dirt about him, in an effort at taking him down. Sure enough, someone has leaked to CNN that Barr has been trying to block the SDNY from criminally pursuing Trump-connected Turkish bank Halkbank.

We don’t know who leaked the story. But as a general rule, whoever comes off looking like the hero in a leaked story, that’s usually the person who leaked it. In this instance the “hero” of the Halkbank story is the U.S. Attorney in charge of the SDNY, Geoffrey Berman. So take that for whatever it’s worth. But the upshot here is that because Barr did something so stupidly brazen in the Stone case, he’s now getting caught red handed in other matters like the Halkbank case.

Of course this Halkbank story is nothing new. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has been pursuing it for months, but it finally has legs as a result of Barr’s Stone overreach. Wyden tweeted this today, citing the CNN story: “I’ve been investigating Trump’s interference in the investigation into Turkish-owned Halkbank, and my suspicions were just confirmed. Attorney General Barr — at Trump’s request — was trying to orchestrate a sweetheart deal to please President Erdogan.”