This is Josh Marshall’s take on the sell out of William Barr, who, despite his oath to uphold the law, is playing Trump lackey and validating Deep State conspiracy theory.
You cannot rely on the mainstream press to state clearly that this is a conscious and deliberate effort by the Attorney General to validate a conspiracy theory which has no basis and to grease the skids for punitive action against the people who were involved in the investigation. There’s zero ambiguity here. There’s no question why he talked about “spying.” We’re in a very dangerous place.
This performance produced headlines everywhere having the Attorney General confirm “spying” against the Trump campaign. Reporters and anchors are quibbling that … well, yes there was some surveillance of people tied to the campaign so … well this could be called “spying” but …
This is silly. There was a court sanctioned counter-intelligence investigation. We have every reason to believe it was legal and proper. Indeed, it’s already been investigated by the DOJ Inspector General, an investigation that while broadly legitimate was clearly looking for facts helpful to the President. Whatever we learn from the Mueller report, it is abundantly clear there was a strong counter-intelligence rationale for the investigation.
Barr has shown his true colors as being Trump’s man before he is the Attorney General for the people. Trump idolized Roy Cohn. Maybe Barr is Trump’s Roy Cohn surrogate. Cohn didn’t exactly leave Washington under a parade banner for his service to the nation. Maybe the same will be true of William Barr. He didn’t pick the right side of history on this one.
And Trump is going even further off the deep end since Barr started this.
It is not good when the Attorney General of the United States is talking about forming a team to investigate an alleged spying mission on a sitting president, and in doing so merely amplifies a baseless Deep State conspiracy theory. Tom Clancy couldn’t write this, as strange a direction as it looks to be going. This is surreal.