Former Trump-era US Attorney General Bill Barr seems to be desperately trying to rehab his public image now that we’re more than a year removed from the dark days of the Trump administration — but analyst Steve Benen, much like the majority of the American people, is having absolutely none of it.
Writing for MSNBC, Benen positively ripped the former head of the Department of Justice, after news broke that Barr was releasing a new book, in which he goes after the very same former President Donald Trump that he blindly served for just short of four long years, including extraneous efforts to blatantly weaponize and politicize the DOJ in Trumps’ favor and against the then-president’s personal and political enemies.
“Barr’s critique appears largely unreserved, writing that Trump likely would’ve won a second term if he’d been capable of ‘moderating even a little of his pettiness,'” Benen penned. “As for the former president’s brazen lying about his 2020 defeat, Barr’s book argues, ‘The election was not ‘stolen.’ Trump lost it.’ The former attorney general is now convinced that Trump ‘cared only about one thing: himself. Country and principle took second place.'”
Bill Barr ultimately resigned from his top position within the Trump Justice Department in response to Donald’s unhinged efforts to overturn an election that he clearly and fairly lost to Joe Biden, just weeks before the infamous, violent January 6th Capitol attack. But Barr’s move at attempted protest frankly came far too little, too late, as the former Attorney General had already clearly and irrevocably defined his tenure through the 3+ years of highly politicized and controversial moves within the DOJ on Donald Trump’s behalf. No one will soon forget the former AG’s most notorious move when he used his top DOJ position to heavily distort the findings of the Mueller Report to make it appear as though the Special Counsel had exonerated Donald Trump when that was the farthest thing from the truth.
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“Indeed, he may have no use for Trump’s election lies now, but in the recent past, Barr was only too pleased to peddle absurd election conspiracy theories of his own,” Benen fumed, citing Barr’s infamous, albeit baseless June 2020 claims that foreign governments could create fake ballots to throw the election. “It was part of a multi-year effort in which Barr, to a degree unseen in the post-Watergate era, politicized federal law enforcement and too often aligned the Justice Department with the White House’s partisan agenda. On his way out the door, Barr even wrote an over-the-top resignation letter — delivered at a time at which other Justice Department officials were still fighting the good fight in support of democracy — in which he celebrated the president he’s now denouncing.”
“I can appreciate why the Republican lawyer is eager, if not desperate, to rehabilitate his image, but the fact remains that Barr went along with Trump’s dangerous nonsense until it no longer suited his purposes, “Benen’s fiery piece concludes. “The former attorney general’s record chases after him like cans tied to his bumper, and his book doesn’t cut the string.”
No one’s buying what you’re selling Barr. You will never be what you once were, Barr. You have sold your soul to the devil Donald Trump. Was it worth it?
Read Benen’s full column here.
Featured image via Flickr/Department of Justice
