In the last two days, Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice hasn’t done too well in court. They’ve not just lost out on motions meant to stop lawsuits from Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, they came just short of being laughed out of court.
But there’s a reason why Barr might have sent his team in front of judges without being adequately prepared, and it’s not just that he is temperamentally incapable of imagining anyone not simply being bowled over by his brilliance and personal charisma. They’ve been busy. The whole DOJ has been busy. Over those same two days, the DOJ wasn’t just in court defending itself against lawsuits from former employees claiming they were illegally terminated, it was also leaking—leaking like a sieve.
In an attempt to short-circuit the law, damage cases that are currently in court, and in general sustain the web of conspiracy claims built up by Donald Trump, the DOJ has spent the past few days spilling internal documents on the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, declassifying a document related to the “Steele Dossier” expressly for distribution to Republicans in Congress, and hugely inflating what seems to an extremely minor affair in Pennsylvania in an pitiful effort to provide some substance behind Trump constant claims that voting by mail leads to fraud.
It was a busy week for anyone. So it’s not so surprising that they did it all badly.
The strangest thing about the case of a small number of ballots found in a trash bin was the other paperwork—the one where U.S. Attorney David Freed made a public announcement that a federal investigation found nine ballots which had been discarded in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. What was unusual wasn’t just the fact that the Justice Department was blasting out a release before any facts were determined, but that the announcement did not come from Freed. Instead, it was White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany who tweeted out that she could “confirm for you that Trump ballots ... were found cast aside." She predicted that more information was coming soon, and sure enough, just minutes later the DOJ sent out a note announcing an investigation. That investigation failed to allege any crime, but it absolutely did say that Trump’s name was on seven of the ballots, exactly what was needed to fulfill those persecution fantasies.
Since that announcement, it seems to have become clear that the reason the ballots were in the trash is that they were spoiled. They came in without a security envelope and—following strict guidelines that Republicans have been insisting on exactly because they expect more mail-in ballots in 2020 to support Democrats—they were deemed “spoiled.” Even as Donald Trump is claiming to be the victim in Pennsylvania, it’s starting to seem that the ballots were spoiled because of rules insisted on by … Donald Trump. Strangely, the DOJ has not made a new announcement.
On the Flynn case, Barr’s effort to drop the whole matter was supplemented by a statement from FBI special agent William Barnett, who was a part of the Mueller team’s investigation into Flynn. That letter’s compelling statements included thinking that the reasons for opening an investigation into Flynn were “not great” and was concerned about “group think” among other agents who all seemed to think that “Flynn had done something criminal.” The statement also included how, when told that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act, Barnett had to look that act up and decided it was “nothing serious.” So, as with violations of the Hatch Act, it seems that Barr’s team still completely approves of picking and choosing which laws are part of “law and order.”
Releasing Barnett’s interview seems to be designed to undercut Robert Mueller and other members of the investigation in public. However, the way he constantly shrugs off evidence, ignores accusations of crimes, and seems to find every charge against Flynn “improbable” before even bothering to investigate is not likely to make Barnett’s statements particularly compelling in court. It’s also curious that Barnett complains that his position was not taken seriously by the Mueller team, even though he also acknowledges several points that were followed up or included in legal documents.
Also on Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham took time out from begging for money to release a “summary” (because summaries are all we get these days) of the letter which Barr helpfully declassified at the request of Republicans, all of which is meant to bolster their attack on the Trump-Russia investigation. The summary of that summary would be that one of the sources used by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in compiling his set of research memos is not considered to be a Russian agent. Graham called this “the most stunning and damning revelation the committee has uncovered.” Yet somehow, the revelation that information being passed along by Rudy Giuliani is also coming from a Russian agent acting on a plot directly controlled by Vladimir Putin seems not to bother Graham, or any other Republican.
What might be most notable about the string of information released by the DOJ this week is that it is not part of a report from the Durham investigation. The information on Flynn and Steele might be expected to form planks in some kind of structure that Durham was building. The fact that these items are being released now makes the idea that Durham has any great la bombe surprise in the the DOJ fridge seem less likely.
Friday, Sep 25, 2020 · 9:00:33 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Two additional updates on the handful of ballots in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania:
- Barr personally briefed Trump prior to the information being made public, underscoring that this was a deliberate effort to throw some weight behind Trump’s false claims on mail-in ballots.
- Luzerne County has now issued a statement laying out the process by which the ballots were improperly discarded, and saying that the county was not even aware of any of the votes on the ballots until the DOJ made a public statement that seven of the ballots included votes for Trump—again, making it clear that this had nothing to do with election security, and everything to do with helping Trump sell his lies.