Michael Cohen is looking to bring Bill Barr and Donald Trump to justice
Attorney General Bill Barr resigned three weeks before January 6th, presumably because he wanted to shield himself from the endgame criminal antics that he expected (or knew) Donald Trump and his regime would take. But Barr did plenty of illegal things in his own right before he resigned – and now Michael Cohen is looking to bring him and some of his top underlings to justice.
When COVID began spreading through the federal prison system, inmates who met specific qualifications were allowed to spend the rest of their sentence under house arrest. Michael Cohen met those qualifications, and was thus sent home. But after he announced he was publishing an anti-Trump book, the Bureau of Prisons put him back in prison. Then a judge declared that the move had been “retaliatory” and sent Cohen back home. Cohen’s book “Disloyal” ended up becoming a New York Times #1 bestseller.
Michael Cohen’s sentence has now ended, meaning he’s a free man. Donald Trump is gone from office and is under criminal investigation in Manhattan New York, Fulton County Georgia, and Westchester New York, and will end up facing the music. But Bill Barr is still out there – and Barr’s handpicked head of the Bureau of Prisons Michael Carvajal still has his job.
Cohen recently filed a civil suit against Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and Michael Carvajal for the actions they took against him. Not only is Cohen likely to win, there’s a good chance the legal process will end up uncovering evidence of precisely who within the Trump administration gave the order to put Cohen back in prison. This could potentially lead to criminal consequences for whoever gave that order. It’s difficult to imagine that some mere underling concocted this entire retaliation scheme against Cohen, given how plainly illegal the whole thing was. In fact it’s difficult to imagine that the order came from anyone less than Bill Barr himself.
For that matter, Cohen once famously said during his congressional testimony that “Nothing happens in TrumpLand unless it is cleared first through Trump himself.” Would Bil Barr have given such an order without first making sure Trump wanted it to happen? Trump supposedly never writes these kinds of things down. But if Barr were held accountable and ended up flipping, he could be the key to getting to Trump on this and all sorts of federal crimes.
It’s notable that Michael Cohen isn’t alone in wanting answers. Influential House members Hakeem Jeffries and Ted Lieu previously asked DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate who within the DOJ was responsible for putting Cohen back in prison. It’s not known what if any action Horowitz has taken in response to that request. But with the January 6th Committee making moves that could potentially bring everyone in the Trump regime to justice except Bill Barr, now would be a good time to circle back and make sure Bill Barr is also held accountable for his abuses. Uncovering Barr’s role in the retaliation against Cohen might be the most straightforward way to bring Barr to justice.
