Bill Barr is in deep whistleblower trouble
To give you an idea of just how far the Trump regime has gone to try to prevent the whistleblower report against Donald Trump from surfacing, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and his Deputy Sue Gordon were both ousted and/or resigned during the timeframe in which the report was filed. Now, Acting DNI Joseph Maguire is stuck in the middle of a subpoena fight. But it turns out the real culprit here is โ well, you already guessed it.
When the Inspector General testified today, he refused to confirm or deny whether Attorney General Bill Barr was involved in the decision to refuse to turn over the report to Congress, according to NBC News. But as the day has gone on, CNN has confirmed that the Department of Justice did make the decision to suppress the report. That of course means the decision was made by Bill Barr โ and that’s a real problem for him.
Back when Bill Barr lied about what was in the Mueller report, and then released a misleadingly redacted version of it, he was covering up an obstruction of justice crime โ and committing a crime against the truth. But he wasn’t necessarily committing a crime in his own right. In contrast, the law requires the administration to turn over this whistleblower report, and Barr instructed the Acting DNI to violate the law by not turning it over. That’s a crime on Barr’s part, and an easily demonstrated one.
This coverup of the whistleblower report was only going to work if it remained covered up. Bill Barr stuck his neck out way too far by trying to bury this whistleblower complaint. Now that its existence and substance have indeed become public, it’s not the kind of thing that Barr is going to be able to simply skate on. Barr is now all but guaranteed to go to prison after Trump is gone, unless Trump pardons him. To date, for all his innuendo, Trump hasn’t pardoned a single one of his co-conspirators, and has instead let them rot. Barr is in over his head on this one.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report