One need not be a legal expert to know that William Barr blew past all the norms of proper conduct as Trump's attorney general. But a prosecutorial expert like Elie Honig can add depth and context to that knowledge, and does so in his new book, Hatchet Man.
Honig, a former prosecutor with the Southern District of New York, that famed independent office within the Department of justice, methodically goes through the ways in which Barr failed to act with integrity and honesty. Honig ties Barr's specific acts and scandals to a prosecutorial code. By noting with examples from his own career of how prosecutors act in certain situations, and how certain guidelines insure they retain their integrity, Honig offers a cogent account of how Barr did the opposite of what decency and respect for the law demand.
For example, Honig relates the time he was pulled off a case because a potential witness had been represented by his father's law partner in a civil case, about 10 years earlier. Then he outlines Barr's actions regarding the Mueller report. As with the rest of the book, what Barr did is the antithesis of what an ethical prosecutor is expected to do.
This begins with Barr's audition memo and media comments, before he even became attorney general, that questioned the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation. During his confirmation hearing, Barr told now-Vice President Kamala Harris that he would not follow DOJ ethics recommendations if he disagreed with it. Barr did all this while admitting he didn't know the facts of Mueller's work.
Then Barr kept the Mueller report secret for days, including Mueller's summaries that he had received long before the report itself, and lied about what it contained.
The chronicle of Barr's actions continues through his last days in the AG's office, including his obsequious resignation letter and, earlier, his role in the attack of protestors in Layfette Square for Trump's photo op (the one in which he held the Bible upside down).
Honig notes that although part of Barr's conduct might be the result of his never having been a courtroom prosecutor, it also is apparent, and noted, that Barr's political and cultural aims were far more important to him than the rule of law and ethical conduct.
After Honig goes through what Barr did, the author offers 10 recommendations to strengthen the Department of Justice as it recovers from the damage of the Trump years and to help protect itself from another unethical actor down the road. All are practical and doable. Support for the prosecutors and their staff who continued to serve in the trenches during the Barr reign is made clear.
Hatchet Man is a strong rebuke of Barr's years in his second term as attorney general. This is partly because Honig ties what Barr did to what a prosecutor should do. It also is because Honig focuses on Barr's acts themselves rather than the political impetus that drove Republicans in thrall to Trump. As he notes, political views were not, and should not, be a focus of ethical prosecutorial conduct. Because of this distance from the heat of political outrage, the condemnation of Barr's bad acts is a tour de force of a prosecutor's closing argument.
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