We begin today’s roundup with Politico’s analysis of how Attorney General William Barr and Rudy Giuliani are trying to protect Donald Trump at all costs:
The work of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer and a key outside adviser dating back to the 2016 campaign, all but imploded when a whistleblower complaint about the president’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian leaders set off an impeachment investigation.
Attorney General Bill Barr’s efforts have arguably been more successful—at least, that is, in pleasing his boss.
Abigail Tracy at Vanity Fair dives deeper into how Barr is undermining the DOJ:
By early evening, the takeaways from Horowitz’s review differed starkly depending upon one’s corner of the media and political landscape. But this was perhaps by design. This very confusion, Litman suggested, seemed “to be the kind of upshot of having multiple investigations.” Indeed, Barr’s decision to tap Durham to investigate aspects of the Trump-Russia probe, despite Horowitz’s separate investigation, has long raised eyebrows. Not to mention the attorney general’s atypically outsize involvement in the Durham investigation. “The whole thing is really irregular,” Litman added.
Margaret Carlson sums up what Barr’s latest actions confirm:
Move over Rudy, and make room for Attorney General William Barr. Whoever he may have once been, Barr’s become another of Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, serving the president first and the country second, if at all.
Andrew Prokop at Vox:
In the report, Horowitz wrote that the decision to open the investigation “complied with [Justice] Department and FBI policies.” And, he said, he did not conclude that top officials were driven by “political bias or improper motivation” in doing so.
But in Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department, a finding like that can’t be allowed to stand unanswered.
And here’s David Rohde’s analysis at The New Yorker:
One thing that was clear, though, was that the practice of American politics and criminal justice is changing. Trump, through his facts-be-damned statements and take-no-prisoners tweets, has led the way. And his approach to politics is catching—rapidly and rampantly among Republicans and even, more gradually, among Democrats. Democrats, arguably, are cutting corners as they push ahead with their plans for a House impeachment vote by the end of next week. Republicans are demonstrating that they will dismiss any finding, evidence, or fact that does not fit the President’s political narrative.
Switching topics, at USA Today, former Watergate prosector Jill Wine-Banks reflects on the sexism on display in how Republicans are treating females during this impeachment saga:
[Law professor] Karlan wasn't the first strong woman to be insulted and attacked since Trump became president. It started with Sally Yates, who was fired as Trump’s acting attorney general after she spoke truth to power — telling the White House that national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI and refusing to defend Trump’s Muslim ban. For this she was called weak and possibly worse. To me she was a hero, but she’s part of a growing list of women who have been insulted or threatened by Republicans.
The list includes former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — "the woman," as Trump called her in his July phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She was, he told Zelensky, "bad news” and "she's going to go through some things."
On a final note, Robert Reich at Newsweek describes the anti-democracy decade and the way forward:
We're coming to the end of what might be called the anti-democracy decade. It began January 21, 2010, with the Supreme Court's shameful decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission opening the floodgates to big money in politics with the absurd claim that the First Amendment protects corporate speech.
It ends with Donald Trump in the White House, filling his administration with corporate shills and inviting foreign powers to interfere in American elections. [...]
It doesn't have to be this way. Even if Citizens United isn't reversed by the Supreme Court or defanged by constitutional amendment, a principled Congress and decent president could still rescue our democracy.