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You might have thought that the attorney general, traveling around the country to talk about federal law enforcement initiatives, would actually spend his time talking about federal law enforcement initiatives.
But no, instead Attorney General Bill Barr has spent the week using his office (again) for political ends, with just six weeks to go before Election Day, and openly bragging about it.
On Wednesday last week, during a trip to Chicago to talk about “Operation Legend,” Barr took a half-hour to speak to a Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass. Kass published audio of the interview Monday.
“We are going to find ourselves irrevocably committed to a socialist path” if Joe Biden is elected President, Barr said, right after observing that he shouldn’t get involved in politics.
Well, he did, and that wasn’t the only time.
The Democrats’ message, he said in the same interview, “appears to be ‘Biden or no peace’ — the only way this is going to stop is if you put Biden [in office].”
Separately in the interview, and in another purportedly-DOJ-related appearance in Phoenix, Barr falsely said that voting by mail was not a secret process — a message that fits squarely with President Donald Trump’s push to discourage the practice and sow suspicion about election results.
“There’s no more secret vote with mail-in vote,” Barr lied to Kass.
“There’s no more secret vote, there’s no secret vote,” Barr said the next day in Phoenix. “Your name is associated with a particular ballot. The government and the people involved can find out and know how you voted. And it opens up the door to coercion.”
The visit to Phoenix was purportedly planned to announce an update in Operation Crystal Shield, a methamphetamine-focused project. But as The Associated Press noted, “Barr spent the majority of his time answering questions unrelated to the drug busts.”
Among other suits, the Trump campaign has sued the state of Nevada over its plan to mail every active voter a ballot. But it was Barr on Thursday, not the campaign, trashing the idea.
“There’s no more secret vote, there’s no secret vote” with mail-in voting, he said, falsely. “Your name is associated with a particular ballot. The government and the people involved can find out and know how you voted. And it opens up the door to coercion.”
It’s not the first time for Barr. He told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer earlier this month about an outrageous case of widespread fraud that turned out to be bogus.
Red flags abound: The Justice Department is investigating the publication of John Bolton’s book. And Nora Dannehy, a prosecutor on John Durham’s probe into the Russia investigation, recently resigned after showing concern “in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr — who appointed Durham — to produce results before the election,” the The Hartford Courant reported.
Line prosecutors looking to Barr for reassurance haven’t found it: At an event Wednesday night — in between comparisons of COVID-19 orders to slavery — Barr compared career prosecutors to kindergarteners, and asserted only he was allowed to get political.
Here’s what else we were watching this week:
- DeJoy Gave $600,000 to GOP After Postmaster Job Opened Up
- DHS Probes Whistleblower Claims Of Unwanted Hysterectomies At Private ICE Jail
- Trump Official Gives New Reasons For State Inspector General’s Firing
- WH Budget Chief Calls For Feds To Sniff Out Un-American Diversity Training ‘Buzzwords’
- Schrödinger’s DHS Secretary: Trump Official Is Both And Neither, All At Once
- A Judge Agreed That Chad Wolf Is Likely Serving Illegally At DHS. What Happens Next?
- Trump’s New NOAA Hire Is A Climate Science Denier Who Rails Against ‘Thug’ Mainstream
- USPS’ Confusing Vote-By-Mail Postcard Frustrates State Election Officials
