An abuse of power': alarm grows over top Trump
lieutenant's military masquerade
Attorney general William Barr stands accused of
directing violence against peaceful protesters, and pushing Trump’s unhinged
conspiracy theories
Tom
McCarthy
@TeeMcSee
Email
Thu 11 Jun
2020 10.02 BSTLast modified on Thu 11 Jun 2020 10.07 BST
Barr’s
critics now fear that he has taken a new step, of trying on a military hat as
the president’s top lieutenant in the antagonistic posture the White House has
taken.
In a rare
wave of accountability for police brutality in the United States in recent
weeks, four police officers were arrested in Minneapolis, a police chief was
fired in Louisville, and officers were charged with felony assault in Atlanta,
Buffalo and New York City.
Now the top
law enforcement official in the country, the attorney general, William Barr, is
facing an internal crisis of confidence and growing calls for his own
resignation.
Barr stands
accused of directing violence against peaceful demonstrators outside the White
House earlier this month, and with peddling a conspiracy theory advanced by
Donald Trump in an attempt to smear protesters, who enjoy wide public support.
In the
first 16 months of his tenure, Barr caught criticism for compromising justice
department independence with his seemingly lockstep defense of Trump, whether
he was protecting the president from the investigation of special counsel
Robert Mueller or intervening in criminal cases against the former Trump aides
Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
But Barr’s
critics now fear that he has taken a new step, of trying on a military hat as
the president’s top lieutenant in the antagonistic posture the White House has
taken against street protests that have sprung up after the killing of George Floyd,
an African American man, in Minneapolis by white police officers.
Nearly
1,600 former justice department officials published an open letter to the
department’s inspector general on Wednesday demanding an internal investigation
of Barr’s actions in response to street protests.
The
attorney general’s denial at the weekend that systemic racism was a problem in
US law enforcement prompted new calls for his resignation.
“I think
there’s racism in the United States still, but I don’t think that the law
enforcement system is systemically racist,” Barr told CBS News’ Face the
Nation. “And I would say, you know, the president, before any of this happened,
was out in front on this issue.”
On no
planet has Trump been “out in front” in the campaign against racist policing,
said Kandace Montgomery, director of Black Visions, a Twin Cities-based
activist organization.
“William
Barr is a white man who is serving a racist administration, so of course he’s
going to deny the fact that the current law enforcement system is systemically
racist,” Montgomery said. “History and facts have proven otherwise. But we know
how that administration feels about facts.”
While Barr
does not credit the reality of systemic racism, he is an eager proponent of an
elaborate conspiracy theory about the protests advanced by Trump, who tweeted
this week that an elderly activist pushed to the ground by police in Buffalo,
New York, “could be an antifa provocateur”.
None of 51
individuals facing federal charges in connection with protests in recent weeks
has any alleged link to any such conspiracy, according to court documents
reviewed by NPR.
Challenged
on the hole in the “antifa” story, Barr told told Fox News on Monday that the
relevant cases were still in process. “We have some investigations under way,
very focused investigations on certain individuals that relate to antifa,” he
said.
On account
of a deference to Trump that has been perceived as excessive, Barr has in the
past been embroiled in criticism, for dropping the prosecution of Trump
cronies; distorting the findings of Mueller; advancing investigations seemingly
designed to harm Trump opponent Joe Biden; defending Trump’s firing of
inspectors general and more.
“He can’t
function in the job as the founders intended the job to be done, and he needs
to be removed,” said Donald K Sherman, deputy director of the Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington watchdog group. “We have seen him
literally bend the scales of justice to protect the president’s rich, white,
criminal allies, versus what he has done to people who have dared to stand up
peacefully against racial injustice in America.”
With the
rise of a national protest movement for racial equality, a new Barr has
emerged, his critics say – one who seems ready to lead Trump’s charge against
American citizens on US soil.
Barr has
disputed reports that he personally ordered a violent crackdown outside the
White House on 1 June to clear protesters for a Trump photo op at a church,
telling the Associated Press: “My attitude was: get it done. But I didn’t say,
‘Go do it’.”
But Barr was
spotted reviewing security arrangements outside the White House shortly before
the crackdown began, and Trump’s press secretary said flatly on Monday: “It was
AG Barr who made the decision.”
Neil
Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who worked in the Office of Legal
Counsel under Bill Clinton, said it was “quite unusual” for an attorney general
to personally direct security forces.
What’s unusual about what he appears to have
done is taking a role in directing the use of force –that's a military function
“It isn’t
unusual for the attorney general to give the president legal advice about what
his authorities are in responding to crises, including responding to unrest of
the sort that we’re seeing,” said Kinkopf, noting that President Dwight
Eisenhower’s attorney general issued a legal opinion in 1957 before troops were
sent to enforce school desegregation in Arkansas.
“What’s
unusual about what Barr appears to have done is taking a role in directing the
use of force, ordering the use of force – that’s a military function, not a
justice department function.”
As attorney
general, Barr could bring immense pressure to bear in achieving police reform.
In 14 cases under Barack Obama, the justice department cracked down on police
departments with sanctions known as consent decrees and ended the distribution
of military-style combat gear to police departments.
But Trump,
who has personally encouraged police brutality, threw out an Obama-era blueprint
for police reform, reversed the decision on military gear and has stopped the
use of consent decrees.
“Just
because we don’t use that particular tool in every instance doesn’t mean that
we’re not doing something about it,’ Barr told CBS.
Military
force against protesters
Barr has
tried to downplay Trump’s open enthusiasm for deploying military force in
American cities, denying reports that the president wanted to respond to
demonstrators outside the White House by invoking the Insurrection Act and mobilizing
10,000 troops.
“The
president never asked or suggested that we needed to deploy regular troops” to
clear the area around the White House, Barr claimed.
In the
hours before protesters outside the White House were gassed, however, Trump
held a call with state governors in which the president demanded more aggressive
use of force against the demonstrators.
“You have
to dominate or you’ll look like a bunch of jerks. You have to arrest and try
people,” Trump said on the call.
Barr
himself then spoke on the call, advising the governors that the federal
government would rely on the Joint Terrorism Task Force – a national law
enforcement network that was beefed up after the September 11 attacks – to
coordinate operations.
“It’s a
tried and true system, it’s worked for domestic homegrown terrorists, and we’re
going to apply that model,” Barr said on the call.
Trump then
tweeted an enthusiastic endorsement of the Republican senator Tom Cotton’s call
for the deployment of the 101st Airborne, an elite US army combat unit
typically deployed in some of the world’s most rugged corners, against US
citizens. “100% Correct,” Trump wrote. “Thank you Tom!”
Donald
Sherman said that Barr’s masquerade as a military man amounted to “an abuse of
power, and it is a harbinger of potentially worse things to come.”
“Donald
Trump contested and refused to believe the results of an election that he won,”
Sherman said. “So I think it is reasonable to be concerned about what the
attorney general’s role is in enabling his conspiracy theories and his attacks
on democratic institutions.
“The stakes
are only going to get higher from here.”
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