"Top Cop" William Barr Going Off the Deep End

What has become clear in recent weeks is that Attorney General Barr has become another of Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, serving the president first and the country second, if at all. 

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz had barely issued his report clearing the FBI of bias in its investigation of Russian interference in the Trump campaign/election before Barr was out and about, contradicting it, just like he did pre-damage control on Robert Mueller’s report.   According to Barr, the Horowitz report  "now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”

The 476-page report made no such thing clear.   Quite the opposite. Horowitz squashed a thousand conspiracy theories about the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane that have been idiotically cultivated by the president and his defenders.  The OIG’s main finding was that the inquiry started “in compliance with Department and FBI policies with no political bias,” and had “an authorized investigative purpose.”  It did not rely on materials from the infamous Christopher Steele dossier until AFTER the investigation had already been opened.  There were procedural issues with the application for a FISA warrant, which the FBI will correct.  But no information derived from the warrant was actually used.  A low-level agent who didn’t follow procedures is gone. And there was no spying on the Trump campaign.  But that doesn't stop Barr from his alternative-reality bullshit. 

Before Barr's mis-characterization of the OIG report, there was his Notre Dame speech in October, where Barr denounced liberalism and secularism and warned that “militant secularists” were out to destroy America’s “moral order” with rhetoric that would have fit right in at Nuremberg.

Then, last week, came that shocking (and not much shocks anymore, but this one really did) speech about how the police just might stop protecting communities that didn’t show them the proper respect. The American people, he said, “have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves. And if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”  

To hear the nation's top law enforcement official say that certain people in the country won't get full protection of the law is scary-- something right out of the fascist playbook.