William Barr makes bizarre move which reveals he’s scared to death of being held in contempt tomorrow
He’s done it again. When Attorney General William Barr asked the House Judiciary Committee to meet with him in the hope of convincing them not to hold him in contempt of Congress, he gave away that he was afraid of being held in contempt. When that meeting predictably went nowhere, he made a bizarre move tonight which reveals that he’s scared to death of contempt.
William Barr sent House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler a letter tonight, essentially claiming that the entire Mueller report is subject to executive privilege – apparently including the hundreds of pages of the report that Barr has already publicly released. If this makes no sense to you, then don’t worry, because it doesn’t make sense to anyone else either.
The one coherent aspect of this letter is that Barr is asking Donald Trump to invoke executive privilege over the report, which might make it harder for Congress to get its hands on the parts of the report that are still redacted. More specifically, it would then be Trump who’s refusing to turn over the redacted portions, and not Barr. This would mean that once Barr is hit with the consequences of being held in contempt (fines, arrest, whatever it may be), he can argue to a judge that it wasn’t his fault, because it’s actually Trump who’s in contempt.
The catch here is that Donald Trump would actually have to assert executive privilege over the Mueller report. We don’t know if he’ll do it, but if he does he’s pretty stupid, because he’ll be inheriting Barr’s current legal troubles. In any case, Barr is throwing everything he has at the wall tonight, out of rather obvious fear of being held in contempt of Congress. We told you Barr was no longer in position to play offense, and now he’s playing some pretty bizarre defense.
