The president is not 'an errand boy for Congress': Barr says he's protecting presidency, not Trump

HINGTON – In the short time since his
return to the Justice Department, Attorney
General William Barr has faced a tidal
wave of public controversy and criticism
for what critics see as an effort to shield
President Donald Trump from
congressional oversight.

Barr has been accused of misrepresenting
the contents of special counsel Robert
Mueller's report on Russian election
interference and potential obstruction of
justice by the president. The House
Judiciary Committee has already voted to
hold Barr in contempt for refusing to
comply with a subpoena for an unredacted
version of Mueller's report. And pundits
and politicians, including some
conservatives, have accused him of acting
like the president's personal defense
attorney. Many of the 2020 presidential
candidates have called on him to resign.
But it is the presidency, not the president,
that he is defending, Barr told The Wall
Street Journal during a trip to El Salvador,
his first interview since his February
swearing in.

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"I felt the rules were being changed to hurt
Trump, and I thought it was damaging for
the presidency over the long haul," Barr
said.

"At every grave juncture the presidency
has done what it is supposed to do, which
is to provide leadership and direction," he
told the Journal. "If you destroy the
presidency and make it an errand boy for
Congress, we’re going to be a much weaker
and more divided nation."
Barr, 68, has long believed in the need for
a strong executive branch. In his first stint
as attorney general under President George
H.W. Bush, he bristled at independent
counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation
into the Iran-Contra affair and reportedly
had "an itchy finger" to fire him.
Walsh's probe into the Reagan
administration's sale of arms to Iran and
illegal funding of anti-communist rebels in
Nicaragua uncovered notes from Secretary
of Defense Caspar Weinberger, which
Walsh said were "evidence of a conspiracy
among the highest-ranking Reagan
Administration officials to lie to Congress
and the American public."
Weinberger was facing felony indictments
when Barr advised Bush to pardon him,
along with five other officials implicated in
the scandal.

In 2001, Barr explained that he "favored
the broadest" use of the president's power
to pardon.
"I went over and told the President I
thought he should not only pardon Caspar
Weinberger, but while he was at it, he
should pardon about five others," Barr
said.
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When Bush and his advisers debated
whether or not to go to war after Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait,
then-Deputy Attorney General Barr argued
the president had the authority to order
military operations with or without
congressional approval, according to Bob
Woodward's 1991 book, "The
Commanders."

During his time at the head of Bush's Office
of Legal Counsel, he tried to restore the
"powers of the presidency," which he felt
had been "severely eroded since Watergate
and the tactics of the Hill Democrats over
an extended period of time when they were
in power." He said the group tried to create
"uniform standards on how you handle
document requests, how you serve
executive privilege, what Congress can get,
what they can’t get."
And in a February 2017 op-ed for The
Washington Post, Barr said Trump clearly
had the constitutional authority to order a
ban on travel to the United States from a
list of predominantly Muslim nations and
was right to fire acting Attorney General
Sally Yates when she directed the Justice
Department not to defend the order in
court.

"Presidential powers are not exercised by a
body or group. The Constitution vests 'all
executive power' in one and only one
person – the president," Barr wrote. "The
president need not 'convince' his
subordinate that his decision reflects the
best view of the law."
And in a June 2018 memo to the Justice
Department, Barr warned that if Mueller
found Trump's firing of FBI Director James
Comey to be obstruction it "would have
potentially disastrous implications, not just
for the Presidency, but for the Executive
branch as a whole."
"The Constitution places no such limit on
the President's supervisory authority," Barr
argued.

Barr has also generated controversy with
his contention that "spying did occur" by
the FBI on the Trump campaign in 2016.
He has opened an investigation to
determine if that "spying" was "properly
predicated" and whether "government
officials abused their power and put their
thumb on the scale."
"Government power was used to spy on
American citizens," Barr told the Journal in
the first part of the interview, which was
published last week. "I can’t imagine any
world where we wouldn’t take a look and
make sure that was done properly."
Comey has defended the decision to
investigate Trump campaign officials.
"The FBI doesn’t spy, the FBI investigates,"
Comey said in an interview earlier this
month. "We investigated a very serious
allegation that Americans might be hooked
up with the Russian effort to attack our
democracy."

Mueller's report did not call for Trump's
prosecution for obstruction of justice, nor
did it exonerate him. Rather, it outlined the
evidence of 10 potentially obstructive acts.
Barr and then-Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein decided not to charge
Trump.

Many legal experts and former federal
prosecutors have opined that anyone who
was not the president would have been
charged. Barr's decision not to prosecute
and his encouragement of Trump to
assert executive privilege in the face of
congressional subpoenas have led many
critics to say that the attorney general has
done irreparable harm to his reputation.
"I've noticed one of the talking points these
days is, 'Oh isn't it a tragedy Barr is losing
his reputation,"' or, 'His legacy is being
tinged because of his service in this
administration,'" Barr told Fox News.
"I don't think those people are really
concerned about my legacy."
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