According to Mother Jones, Barr’s extremist talk “shocked legal experts, who saw Barr’s defense of religious freedom as an assault on the First Amendment’s protection against the government’s establishment of any religion.”. On Twitter, legal experts were horrified.
As former government ethics lawyer Walter Schaub declaimed : This is repugnant. I’m comfortable talking about faith in public, but he was invited to speak at a law school because he’s the Attorney general. His job is to defend the 1st Amendment.
Here’s the news behind the news. Bill Barr, President Trump’s Attorney General, also it turns out, happens to be Joe Biden’s first Attorney General because here was what was happening.
Peter Navarro, President Trump’s Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and the National Defense Production Act policy coordinator, spoke out today on Sunday Morning Futures about former Attorney General William Barr.
According to Peter Navarro, Bill Barr was fast-tracking Biden’s Executive Orders while he was slow-walking President Trump’s. Navarro shared that the last checkmark that had to be done to complete the Executive Order (EO) process was to run the order by the Department of Justice (DOJ):
There is concern over William Barr’s involvement in Epstein’s case, not only for the way he handled Robert Mueller’s testimony over the Russian probe , but because of his personal ties with Epstein himself.
While it was once thought that Barr would be recusing himself from having oversight on the Epstein prosecution, on July 9, it was clarified that Barr consulted with career ethics officials at the department, and concluded that he only needed to recuse himself from the internal Justice Department probe of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, and his involvement of approving a highly controversial no-prosecution deal with Epstein back in the 2008.
William Barr, in full William Pelham Barr, (born May 23, 1950, New York City), American lawyer and government official who served as attorney general of the United States during the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush (1991–93) and Donald Trump (2019–20). Barr was the second person in U.S.
On February 14, 2019 , Barr was confirmed by the Senate in a vote that fell largely along party lines. He was sworn in hours later, becoming the second person in U.S. history to serve twice as attorney general. Barely a month into his term, Barr would be thrust into the spotlight when, on March 22, Mueller concluded his nearly two-year-long investigation and submitted his confidential report to the attorney general. Two days later Barr released a four-page summary, which stated that the “investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia” and also stated that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
Barr argued that the firing of Comey was a “facially-lawful” exercise of “ Executive discretion” and that obstruction would not apply unless Trump had already been found guilty of an underlying crime. Such arguments were advanced by many Trump supporters as well as by advocates of increased presidential authority.
In June 2018 Barr, a private citizen with no formal ties to the U.S. government, sent an unsolicited 19-page memo to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In it Barr disparaged Robert Mueller ’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He was particularly focused on the possibility of Mueller pursuing an obstruction of justice case against Pres. Donald Trump over Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. Barr argued that the firing of Comey was a “facially-lawful” exercise of “ Executive discretion” and that obstruction would not apply unless Trump had already been found guilty of an underlying crime. Such arguments were advanced by many Trump supporters as well as by advocates of increased presidential authority.
A visible rift between Barr and Trump began to appear in the wake of the November 2020 presidential election. Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that Joe Biden ’s victory was invalid due to widespread fraud. Barr, in an unusual break with the president, publicly stated that the Justice Department had found no evidence to support those allegations. On December 14 Barr announced that he would resign as attorney general, effective December 23.
In addition, the Justice Department refused to comply with a subpoena for the unredacted Mueller report, an official stating that the Judiciary Committee’s request did not constitute “legitimate oversight.” In July 2019 the House voted to hold Barr in criminal contempt for refusing to provide documents related to the Trump administration’s unsuccessful efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. As Barr was head of the Justice Department, the legal body that would be tasked with prosecuting such an offense, the move was almost entirely symbolic.
Throughout his term as attorney general Barr would use his position to insulate the White House and Trump’s allies from congressional oversight and federal prosecution. Most notably, the Justice Department directly intervened in the cases of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump adviser Roger Stone. Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators, saw the charges against him dismissed, only to have that dismissal reversed by a U.S. appellate court. In the Stone case, the Justice Department’s own sentencing recommendation was countermanded by a Barr-appointed official after Trump tweeted that he felt that it was too harsh. In both cases, the federal attorneys overseeing the prosecutions resigned in protest. Trump eventually pardoned Flynn and commuted Stone’s sentence.
On Jan. 7, Barr shared his statement to the Associated Press, according to the New York Post, where he directly blamed President Donald Trump for the violent mob. "Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable," read the statement.
For those who haven't been paying attention, Barr resigned from his position as Attorney General on Dec. 23, 2020. Trump actually announced his resignation on — you guessed it — Twitter . "Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House," he wrote, along with Barr's official resignation letter.
As noted above, Trump himself stated that Barr had done an "outstanding job!". as attorney general. He also once called Barr "fair and reasonable" in a 2019 tweet , congratulating Barr for "taking charge" of the February 2020 Mueller investigation.
Bill Barr and Donald Trump actually spoke highly of each other before the riots. If former Attorney General Bill Barr and President Donald Trump's relationship seems to be a confusing one, that's because it is. Prior to Barr slamming Trump on Twitter over the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, the two often said good things about one another.
So what really happened with Bill Barr's resignation from his role as the U.S. Attorney General? Things seemed to turn sour when you look back to what happened prior to Barr leaving his position.
Barr worked for the CIA from 1971 to 1977 while attending graduate school and law school. He was first hired as a summer intern for two years. During his law school years he was an analyst in the Intelligence Directorate division from 1973 to 1975, and then transitioning to an assistant in the Office of Legislative Counsel and an agency liaison to Congress from 1975 to 1977.
Barr was born in New York City in 1950. His father, Donald Barr, taught English literature at Columbia University before becoming headmaster of the Dalton School in Manhattan and later the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, both members of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Barr's mother, Mary Margaret (née Ahern), also taught at Columbia. Barr's father was Jewish and raised in Judaism but later converted to Christianity and joined the Catholic Church. His mother is of Iri…
A lifelong Republican, Barr takes an expansive view of executive powers and supports "law and order" policies. Considered an establishment Republican at the time of his confirmation, Barr gained a reputation as someone loyal to Trump and his policies during his second tenure as attorney general. His efforts to support the sitting president politically during his DOJ office tenure have be…
Barr has been married to Christine Moynihan Barr since 1973. She holds a master's degree in library science, and together they have three daughters: Mary Barr Daly, Patricia Barr Straughn, and Margaret (Meg) Barr. Their eldest daughter, Mary, born 1977/1978, was a senior Justice Department official who oversaw the department's anti-opioid and addiction efforts; Patricia, born 1981/1982, was counsel for the House Agriculture Committee; and Meg, born 1984/1985, is a fo…
In 1992, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by George Washington University.
• — (2022). One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-06-315860-3.
• Russian interference in the 2020 United States elections
• Timeline of investigations into Donald Trump and Russia (January–June 2018)
• Timeline of investigations into Donald Trump and Russia (2019)