Latest in William Barr
Below is a transcript of the remarks as delivered by Attorney General William Barr at Hillsdale College on September 16, 2020, including the subsequent question and answer period.
Brad Wiegmann’s removal as head of the National Security Division’s policy office is a major loss for the Department of Justice.
On Tuesday, July 28, at 10:00 a.m., the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Department of Justice, including the federal law enforcement response to recent protests against police brutality. The committee will hear testimony from Attorney General William Barr.
You can watch a livestream of the hearing here and below:
The former U.S attorney wouldn’t discuss active cases or speculate on the motivations of Main Justice. But he did offer a detailed timeline of the frenzied 30 hour period during which he was dismissed.
A Justice Department veteran testified last week that attorneys in the Antitrust Division were ordered to open unfounded investigations targeted at companies Attorney General Barr dislikes. If true, this is deeply troubling.
Congress should investigate what just happened in the Southern District of New York.
On Tuesday, July 23, Attorney General William Barr delivered a keynote address at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University. The complete speech can be read below.
Good Morning.
Jan Crawford’s extraordinary CBS interview with Attorney General William Barr was released on Friday, May 31. In it Barr said some good things about why his investigation of the Trump campaign investigation is needed. He also said some bad things about his attitude toward his investigation that reveal the depressingly ugly state of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement institutions.
On the Need for an Investigation
Jack Goldsmith’s defense of Attorney General Barr’s handling of the Mueller report is typically thoughtful but ultimately unpersuasive. While certain aspects of Barr’s behavior could be defensible if they stood alone, taken as a whole his course of conduct—what he said, how he said it and what he didn’t say—shows that Barr is not merely “defen[ding] the presidency” institutionally, as Goldsmith argues, but defending this particular president politically.
I’ve been in a cave for several weeks crashing to complete my new book and am only now emerging to read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and the commentary on it. I’ll hopefully have more to say on the report, especially on its legal analysis of criminal obstruction of justice as applied to the president.