It was a charge that had temporarily receded from the headlines as the coronavirus raced around the globe, pushing aside concerns that had exploded in February when Barr intervened to water down a sentencing recommendation in another high-profile Mueller case: Roger Stone. The move rattled the department — four Stone prosecutors quit the case and one left government altogether — while the president cheered on Barr. The situation deteriorated so quickly that Barr publicly urged Trump to stop commenting on DOJ cases, even issuing what sounded like a veiled threat to resign if he didn’t.
Thursday brought those tensions roaring back into the headlines. Barr had, once again, stepped into a Mueller case on behalf of a close Trump ally. Once again, the lead prosecutor quit the case instead of going along with Barr’s decision. Once again, Justice Department officials were exasperated and disheartened.
For many within the department, it was another day that fueled the view the president’s friends and supporters were winning favors unavailable to the vast majority of criminal defendants. Already, Barr had faced blowback over his summary of Mueller’s findings before the special counsel’s report was released. Later, Barr weathered criticism for his decision to launch a wide-ranging probe into the origins of the election-year investigation of Trump and his aides. Each step, the attorney general’s detractors argue, undercut the department’s independence and bolstered suspicions that DOJ leadership is simply catering to Trump’s desires.
Barr insisted Thursday night that he was not dragging politics into his decisions, suggesting the real bias at work was against Flynn, who had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents in an interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
“I want to make sure that we restore confidence in the system. There’s only one standard of justice,” Barr told CBS News. “It’s sad that nowadays these partisan feelings are so strong that people have lost any sense of justice.”
Asked whether he was doing Trump’s bidding, Barr said: “I’m doing the law’s bidding.”
The proclamation rang hollow to numerous Justice Department employees.
“There seems to be a different set of rules for political appointees,” said one longtime DOJ official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I was surprised. I didn’t think it would end like this — and this quickly.”
The official said Barr’s move was another signal to career officials that their work could be readily upended for political reasons. “It’s more demoralizing than anything else,” the DOJ official said.
One Justice Department lawyer added: “It’s deeply disheartening to see politics infect Justice. It’s everywhere now under Barr.“
While officials predicted more departures at DOJ, the overt signs of protest from within the department Thursday were relatively mild.
While the longtime prosecutor on the Flynn case, Brandon L. Van Grack, withdrew shortly before the government moved to dismiss the case, department officials said Van Grack would remain in his post overseeing foreign-agent cases.
The other line prosecutor handling the Flynn case in recent months, Jocelyn Ballantine, appeared to have declined to sign the 20-page pleading explaining why DOJ was seeking to drop the prosecution.
Some lamented that there was not already a more dramatic response to Barr’s actions.
“This moment represents the full collapse of an apolitical Justice Department. An astonishing assault on the rule of law and in a functional DOJ it would prompt mass resignation,” former intelligence community lawyer Susan Hennessey wrote on Twitter.
While current Justice officials appeared publicly mum, former officials were blunt about their views.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who arranged the critical interview with Flynn in January 2017, ridiculed Barr’s conclusion that there was no valid basis to talk to the then-national security adviser about his contacts during the transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“The Department’s position that the FBI had no reason to interview Mr. Flynn pursuant to its counterintelligence investigation is patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised,” McCabe said in a statement. “Today’s move by the Justice Department has nothing to do with the facts or the law — it is pure politics designed to please the president.“
Not all Justice Department veterans were critical of Barr’s action. Former prosecutor Sol Wisenberg said the attorney general was correct to conclude that Flynn’s interview was not part of any legitimate inquiry.
“This is certainly part of the Mueller investigation that needs undoing,” Wisenberg wrote on Twitter.
Source: politico.com
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