America's attorney-general is on a quest to undo the probe into Russian electoral interference
ON DECEMBER 1ST 2017 Michael Flynn, one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters and his first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators. “I recognise that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong,” he told the court. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.” These included making “materially false statements” that impeded the investigation into Russian interference in America’s presidential election of 2016.
Mr Barr called the decision to drop Mr Flynn’s prosecution “easy”. He believed the underlying investigation against Mr Flynn was illegitimate, and that his lies were therefore immaterial. He also derided the FBI’s tactics, accusing a former FBI director, James Comey, of “purposely [going] around the Justice Department”, and investigators of having laid “a perjury trap for General Flynn”.
“Evidentiary problems that have emerged create reasonable doubt” regarding the charges against Mr Flynn, said the Justice Department’s filing, an argument that defence attorneys make routinely. Consequently, “the government has concluded that the evidence is insufficient to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt”—despite the defendant having pleaded guilty to the thing he was charged with.
What is Mr Barr doing, then? He obtained his post after writing a long, unsolicited memo to Rod Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney-general, about Robert Mueller’s investigation. In it, he makes several odd assumptions about what Mr Mueller was investigating. He argues that federal lawyers, including the attorney-general, are presidential “subordinates”—“merely his hand”—and that all of their actions are subject to his approval.
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