In back-to-back op-eds, two Justice Department alums decried Attorney General William Barr's corruption of the department charged with upholding the country's rule of law.
On Sunday, the former acting attorney general for national security from 2016 to 2017 detailed how Barr had "twisted" her words in order to reach the completely unsupported conclusion that the case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn should be dropped.
Although the motion to dismiss the charges stated that continuing the prosecution "would not serve the interests of justice," former official Mary McCord said Barr and the acting U.S. attorney overseeing the case were delivering a miscarriage of justice. As McCord noted, the motion to dismiss actually makes more than 25 references to an FBI interview she did regarding the FBI's questioning of Flynn.
"In short," she writes in The New York Times, "the report of my interview does not anywhere suggest that the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was unconstitutional, unlawful or not ‘tethered’ to any legitimate counterintelligence purpose." In other words, Barr and acting U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea, a Barr loyalist, had no grounds whatsoever to withdraw the case.
A former federal prosecutor who exited the Justice Department over Barr's recent handling of the case against longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone reached a similar conclusion about the Flynn case in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
"I resigned because I was not willing to serve a department that would so easily abdicate its responsibility to dispense impartial justice," wrote Jonathan Kravis, who had served 10 years as a trial attorney for the department and had been assigned to the Stone case. Kravis called the decision to drop Flynn's case an "equally appalling chapter" in Barr's tenure overseeing the department.
"In both cases, the department undercut the work of career employees to protect an ally of the president, an abdication of the commitment to equal justice under the law," Kravis wrote. "Indeed, the department chose to assign these matters to a special counsel precisely to avoid the appearance of political influence. For the attorney general now to directly intervene to benefit the president’s associates makes this betrayal of the rule of law even more egregious."
Kravis said he had not previously spoken out about Barr's effort to get a lighter sentence for Stone but now felt "compelled" to do so because his colleagues still serving the department are "duty-bound to remain silent."
"I am convinced that the department’s conduct in the Stone and Flynn cases will do lasting damage to the institution," Kravis concluded.
Yep. Even Barr knows what he's doing is indefensible. His quip last week that history is "written by the winners" was an admission that only Trump allies and sycophants would be able to justify his actions.