Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Meanwhile, back in the DOJ....




The problem with the Ken Starr investigation was not that Bill Clinton tried to weasel out of admitting he got blow jobs from Lewinsky in the Oval Office, but that Starr kept his investigation going long enough that he finally found something (Clinton dissembled!) he could charge as a "crime," which the Gingrich House was only too happy to define as a "high crime and misdemeanor."

That puts Barr's comments in context:


Barr "thinks spying did occur," but that's not even the basis for issuing a search warrant, much less conducting a legal investigation.  Law enforcement at any level may "think" you look guilty of something.  That's not grounds for investigating you to find out what you might be guilty of.   Barr's "obligation to make sure government power is not abused" includes the obligation not to abuse it.  Ken Starr is the poster child for that abuse, but Barr is arguing we should crank up that kind of investigation again, and keep digging until we find something we can charge against someone.

Ironically, it's the very definition of a "witch hunt."

Aaron Rupar boils it down to its essence:

Law enforcement does not investigate "concerns."  Counterintelligence might do so, in order to provide a defense against intelligence operatives or hostile forces (forces armed with guns or economic power).  Law enforcement is limited by the boundary issue of  "reasonable suspicion."  Basically, if you couldn't get a court to approve a search warrant for it, you can't investigate it.  without "reasonable suspicion," a police officer can't even stop an individual on the street.  And those statements by Barr play in this context:
Barr's general reference to "Vietnam" is a reference to the days of COINTELPRO, when the FBI was investigated for illegal activity such as domestic spying.  There is a fine line between counterintelligence activities and illegal spying activities, and the line is that one is legal and proper conduct, and the other is illegal and can be a criminal act.  But Barr doesn't distinguish between proper and improper:  he jumps straight to the allegation of criminality, and wants to work his way backwards to evidence of such criminality.  That's what Trump alleges happened, and that's the kind of real witch hunt Trump is calling for.

So is Barr the Attorney General of the United States, or the personal prosecutor and legal defender of Donald Trump?


If the former, he's doing a very bad job of it; if the latter, he's sounding like Giuliani.
There are all kinds of problems here.
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