The list of former Justice Department officials warning of a “grave threat to the fair administration of justice” and calling on Attorney General William Barr to resign has grown to more than 2,000—nearly doubling in 24 hours. In their letter, the former Justice lawyers call on “the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice.”
The message that Barr must resign was echoed on Monday by Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Writing in The Atlantic, Ayer dissects Barr in astonishingly strong terms, arguing that the core of Barr’s “unfitness for office” is that “he does not believe in the central tenet of our system of government—that no person is above the law,” and that “given our national faith and trust in a rule of law no one can subvert, it is not too strong to say that Bill Barr is un-American.”
The Federal Judges Association, meanwhile, took a big step toward joining all these former Justice Department officials in sounding the alarm, calling an emergency meeting to address the “deepening crisis” in the justice system.
The depth of the crisis can be measured in the vast and growing number of people who pride themselves on their allegiance to nonpartisan, nonpolitical justice who are speaking up in ways that will inevitably be described as political. Many of these are people who have worked under or been appointed by Republicans—and they’re still saying this is a break glass in case of emergency moment.
And if you were tempted to take Barr’s claim that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job” as a sign that Barr would ever stand against Trump, here’s yet another sign that that hope, however faint, was never reality. A White House official yet again affirmed Trump’s confidence in Barr. Because Barr is fully on board with Trump’s abuses of power and is doing his part to swing the power of the Justice Department into enabling Trump, protecting his lawbreaking allies, and attacking his opponents.
Sign and send the petition to your U.S. senators: Call on Bill Barr to resign.