Attorney General Barr Quotes

By December 1, Donald Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, had had enough of what he later called “bullshit” election claims. Barr told the Associated Press that the Department of Justice had been investigating the allegations of fraud, and “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” This made Trump so angry that he reportedly threw his lunch at a wall in the White House.

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems.

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.

President George W. Bush. He worked directly under CIA “asset” James Comey, who held the position of Deputy Attorney General, and Comey worked directly under CIA officer John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the United States. As FBI Director, Wray worked directly under Attorney General William Barr, who, like Wray, is a CIA officer who used an “official cover.” Barr was “officially” in the CIA in the 1970s, first with the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate from 1973 to 1975 and then with the CIA’s Office of Legislative Counsel from 1975 to 1977.[357] Shortly after CIA officer George H. W. Bush became President, he appointed Barr to be an Assistant

As Barr saw it, he had written the letter to be intentionally brief and include only Mueller’s baseline conclusions, and as an act of good faith he quoted Mueller’s language about not being able to “exonerate” the president. What’s more, Barr told his team, they had given Mueller and his deputies an opportunity to review a draft of the letter and Zebley declined. How could Zebley now be upset about it? On March 27, Mueller signed a letter to Barr from the special counsel’s office objecting strongly to the attorney general’s handling of the principal conclusions: “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and its conclusions.

To this day, the lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications that are the sum total of who my uncle is are perpetuated by the Republican Party and white evangelical Christians. People who know better, such as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell; true believers, such as Representative Kevin McCarthy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr; and others too numerous to name, have become, unwittingly or not, complicit in their perpetuation. None of the Trump siblings emerged unscathed from my grandfather’s sociopathy and my grandmother’s illnesses, both physical and psychological, but my uncle Donald and my father, Freddy, suffered more than the rest.

Someone should politely explain to antifa [that] the most violent Americans, the most violent and willing Americans, haven’t even left the couch yet. The most violent and ready to go, the most tactically trained, haven’t even got off the couch yet. So you better pray to God, and I mean this literally—or whoever the fuck it is you pray to—that Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, and Attorney General Barr clean this up lawfully. If for any reason the president of the United States feels that it’s not getting done the way it should and decides to put out the tweet that says, ‘My fellow Americans, my fellow 2A-loving Americans, it’s time to take up arms against these assholes,’ you are all fucked in under an hour,” he continued. “[We’re] waiting for that one tweet, that one emergency text message from the fucking president of the United States that gives us the green light to finish this entire thing in under an hour. It will not be law enforcement. It will not be one of these slow, bureaucratic, justice system wheels of justice turning. It’ll be a group of people you didn’t even know fucking existed because we were at our houses, we got off work, we were with our families, but we were ready for that call. And if that call ever does come, you will be fucked seven ways from Sunday. So I suggest you back down.

To this day, the lies, misrepresentations, and fabrications that are the sum total of who my uncle is are perpetuated by the Republican Party and white evangelical Christians. People who know better, such as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell; true believers, such as Representative Kevin McCarthy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr; and others too numerous to name, have become, unwittingly or not, complicit in their perpetuation.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein asked Attorney General Bill Barr about Mueller’s finding that the president had pressured his White House counsel to lie in order to deflect criticism of the president, Barr glibly replied, “Well, that’s not a crime,” rendering Feinstein momentarily speechless. Through audacity and exhaustion, Trump had gotten large segments of the public to accept the notion that if a presidential lie wasn’t a crime, then it was no big deal.

Epstein’s life in the underworld of the global elite begins and ends with the family of William Barr, Trump’s attorney general. As

Progressivism’s doctrines and agenda are dictated from the top by an enlightened elite. The ideology is a conglomerate of abstruse ideas, mashing together elements of Marxism, racial and gender ideologies, radical feminism, transgender ideology, and a host of other “isms.” Writers have used different names to refer to parts of this eclectic ideology: social justice politics, wokeness, cultural Marxism, and so on. American essayist Wesley Yang’s term for it, the successor ideology, is apt. It’s the successor to modern liberalism, seeking to supplant the liberal order itself. The practical agenda of today’s progressive movement is as eclectic as the hodgepodge of ideas undergirding it.

officials in an incumbent administration, entrusted with the most sensitive law enforcement and intelligence tools of government power, might abuse them to spy on their opponents and inject their own proclivities into the political process under the guise of national security. The risk is not just that they might attempt to advance their own partisan political preferences, but also there is a more subtle form of corruption: that officials take on a “praetorian guard” mentality—a smug self-assurance that they know what is best for the country and can justifiably use their powers to prevent the people from making mistakes. The risk is that officials like this, convinced they have a higher duty to protect the country from itself, use the government’s security apparatus to undermine candidates whose fitness for office or whose policy proposals don’t measure up to their standards.

But the main reason Trump won the nomination—and later the general election—was simpler than any of that: he fit the times. Trump had explored running for president twice before, and the voters had shown little interest. This time around, he turned half the country’s unease and confusion about what was happening to America into a powerful political response. In his own way, he articulated the anger that many middle- and working-class Americans felt over the excesses and condescension of the Democratic Party, the coastal elites, and especially the mainstream news media. Trump had diagnosed a decisive divide in the nation: the alienation of average Americans from the increasingly smug and isolated elites that had mismanaged the country and appeared content to preside over a declining America. They felt the old-boy system in Washington had sold them out and that it was time to disrupt the system. Many ordinary Americans were especially sick of the radical progressives’ shrill disparagement of America and scornful attacks on traditional values, and they were deeply frustrated by the wildly partisan role played by the media. In short, in 2016 many voters felt like the character Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Trump’s pugnacious style worked. These frustrated Americans found in him a fighter willing to punch back, go toe-to-toe with the press, and mount a full-throated defense of America and middle-class values. They were tired of the cooing doublespeak of professional politicians and wanted someone who would tell it like it is—straight from the shoulder—and someone willing to follow through and actually do what other politicians said they would do but never did. Trump’s combativeness also enabled him to break through the distortions and smothering hostility of the partisan media and talk right past them, straight to the American people. For many, supporting Trump was an act of defiance—a protest. The more over the top he was, the more they savored the horrified reaction of the elites, especially the media. Arguments that Trump wasn’t presidential missed the point. Trump’s supporters already knew he didn’t conform to presidential norms. Their question was: Where had presidential norms gotten them? They wanted someone who didn’t conform. The Left was taking a wrecking ball to the country. Many fed up Americans wanted to strike back with their own wrecking ball.

Pelosi’s wariness seemed confirmed on March 22, 2019, when Mueller flubbed the unveiling of his team’s report on Trump’s ties to foreign governments. Although the report was devastating, Mueller’s initial silence allowed Attorney General William Barr to issue misleading characterizations that overshadowed the report’s details. Barr claimed that the report “exonerated” the president. The actual report documented a number of extremely problematic relationships between the president’s campaign and Russian officials. Mueller, who did not believe he had the authority to call for impeachment since the independent counsel law had expired, then made things worse by faltering in congressional testimony.

Radical progressivism’s messianic premises; its totalizing ambitions to control all aspects of life; its need to tear down society’s existing belief systems and institutions; its antagonism to free and open debate—all are alien to the values of liberal democracy.

Later, I would work closely with Quayle and found him highly intelligent, unaffected, and a savvy

Throughout our marriage, an ongoing joke between Chris and me was my succession of pledges to her each time I took on a new, challenging job. I would promise that, if she would let me get through just this next one, we would finally slow down and take time for ourselves. This started while I was working and going to night law school. I promised her, “Just wait till I get law school under my belt.” But after that, it was, “Just wait for me to finish this clerkship.” And then, “Just wait for me to make partner at the law firm.” When President George H. W. Bush came to the Department of Justice in 1991 for my swearing-in as Attorney General, I gave remarks in which I went through the whole litany, and ended with, “So Chris, I promise: once I get this Attorney Generalship under my belt, we will take time to smell the flowers.” Everyone laughed. But I did not keep my word. Instead, I had accepted a demanding corporate job that had me commuting every week for nearly fifteen years to the New York area, while she bore the main burden of raising our three daughters. It was time for me to come through.

Perhaps you should occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.

At almost eighty years of age and with thirty-six years in the same government job, he struck me as a consummate bureaucrat—one with a huge ego and penchant for self-promotion.

States do not have the authority to make people think the way it wants them to think.

it is not the role of the state to use its coercive power to remake man and society according to some abstract conception of perfection. The purpose of government is far more modest: maintaining the modicum of order necessary for citizens to flourish in peace as they pursue their freely chosen destiny, both as individuals and together in the free, voluntary associations that develop organically as part of private civil society. The

To my surprise, we adored the social worker assigned to us at Dana-Farber. When first offered her services, I said we did not really need a social worker, but she quickly became indispensable and made life much easier for us.

The malicious murder of an innocent person is simply not on the same moral plane as the execution of the guilty murderer done to uphold the sanctity of the law, the moral order of the community, and the equality of the victim.

Hanlon’s razor: don’t ascribe malice when stupidity is a sufficient explanation.

In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.

And thank you all for being here as we take historic action to deliver a future of safety and security for Americans of every race, religion, color, and creed. We’re joined today by law enforcement professionals and community leaders. Though we may all come from different places and different backgrounds, we’re united by our desire to ensure peace and dignity and equality for all Americans. I’ve just concluded a meeting with incredible families — just incredible families that have been through so much. The families of Ahmaud Arbery, Botham Jean, Antwon Rose, Jemel Roberson, Atatiana Jefferson, Michael Dean, Darius Tarver, Cameron Lamb, and Everett Palmer. These are incredible people. Incredible people. And it’s so sad. Many of these families lost their loved ones in deadly interactions with police. To all of the hurting families, I want you to know that all Americans mourn by your side. Your loved ones will not have died in vain. We are one nation. We grieve together, and we heal together. I can never imagine your pain or the depth of your anguish, but I can promise to fight for justice for all of our people. And I gave a commitment to all of those families today with Senator Tim Scott and Attorney General Bill Barr. We are going to pursue what we said. We will be pursuing it, and we will be pursuing it strongly, Tim. -Remarks by President Trump at Signing of an Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities

In effect, as attorney general, Barr, a leading figure in the newly emergent Catholic right—with its ties to Opus Dei, a mysterious fringe sect with roots in fascist Spain—was bringing in a new strain of religious authoritarianism and theocratic nationalism to join forces with Trumpism on their way to collision after collision with the US Constitution. All this in a world of decadence and depravity tied to figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, whose pedophile operation trafficked in underage girls as young as eleven, and also had links to Russian intelligence.

It struck me how much the country and our politics had changed. Three decades ago, I was confirmed unanimously by the Senate for three successive department posts: Assistant Attorney General, Deputy, and then Attorney General. Now I would be lucky to get just three Democrats to vote for me. I had not changed. The country had.

But if God-less materialist philosophies are treated as “religions” for free exercise purposes, why shouldn’t official efforts to teach them in lieu of religious beliefs be deemed an establishment of religion? Official sponsorship of a nontheistic ideology that takes the place of religion has the same effect on nonadherents as endorsing a particular theistic religion. Indeed, the Supreme Court foresaw the potential for secularism itself becoming established as a state religion. In one of the first cases abolishing school prayer, the Supreme Court acknowledged that “the State may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.’” We have to consider whether our public schools, as currently constituted, are doing exactly that. In my view, the increasing diversity of attitudes and beliefs among Americans in the past few decades makes the states’ continued insistence on a monopoly over publicly funded education constitutionally untenable. This arrangement can no longer finesse the challenge of neutrality, as it did when the religious attitudes of Americans were more monolithic. Nor is it capable of producing genuine religious neutrality. It has deformed and impoverished the very nature of the educational enterprise either by purging it of any moral dimension or by trying to substitute for religion a secular value system that is at war with religion. It is reducing public schools to cockpits for a vicious, winner-take-all culture war over the moral formation of our children. The point is not that we should mandate Christianity in the state’s one-size-fits-all educational monopoly. It is that the diversity of religious belief should lead us to jettison the monopoly. The rise of militant secularism in the United States

What the hell are we doing in Chicago? That is a waste of time!” he spat. “The only reason we are in Chicago, Mr. President, is because you insisted on it. Period!” I hit back. “No, I did not,” he claimed. The President’s senior aide, Stephen Miller, was present and spoke up. “Actually, you did, Mr. President.

it was the relentless, savage attacks of the media.

our 2016 election. It appeared Russian military intelligence hacked into e-mail accounts related to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 2016 and later made public stolen e-mails through various online personas, including a major release by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, just before the Democratic National Convention.

The purpose of government is far more modest: maintaining the modicum of order necessary for citizens to flourish in peace as they pursue their freely chosen destiny, both as individuals and together in the free, voluntary associations that develop organically as part of private civil society. The new radical progressivism

The essential factor, in my view, was the corruption of the mainstream news media beginning around the turn of the century. By the end of the Obama years, the problem had gone far beyond bias or even political hackery; it had become corruption. The great preponderance of media managers, editors, commentators, and reporters were simply unwilling to defend American constitutional ideals, very much including the First Amendment’s guarantees of speech and press freedoms, in order to coddle a movement of progressive zealots.

You could see it happening by the increasing use of the term narrative to describe news reporting. The word suggests an absence of verifiable fact and objective truth; there is only a story, experienced subjectively, or constructs that may or may not correspond to reality. Everyone can have his or her own version of the facts, whatever they are. The upshot is that news journalists are free to look for stories that fit their conception of reality. For some, this means forcing the facts into preferred narratives, even if they don’t admit—to themselves or anyone else—that that’s what they’re doing. For others, it’s a justification for distorting the truth in the cause of righteousness. For still others, it’s a license to lie. Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French statesman and author, and the greatest chronicler of American democracy, hoped that the institution of the free press might check the natural despotic tendencies of democracy. This was not because Tocqueville believed that the American press did a good job of elevating the public’s understanding and discourse; he did not. Rather, he thought the saving grace of the press was that it was highly fragmented and reflected a wide diversity of voices and localized opinion. In his view, it was precisely the wide variety of diverse voices in the press that made it hard, in a large country such as the United States, to galvanize a consolidated national faction that could impose its views on, and lord it over, the rest of the country. It was when the press consolidated into fewer voices and presented itself as a monolith, he held, that it ceased to act as a bulwark against tyranny and instead enabled it. Once press organizations begin to “advance along the same track,” wrote Tocqueville, “their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.” This is what I saw happening. The

worried about Trump’s shortcomings, but I also felt he had strengths. I liked the clear and direct way he staked out a position. I appreciated his willingness to state unpleasant truths that many were thinking but were afraid to say.

One of the Obama administration’s saddest legacies was the increase in welfare dependency.

The practical agenda of today’s progressive movement is as eclectic as the hodgepodge of ideas undergirding it. Its proponents support racial discrimination against whites,

In any case, once Trump became the nominee, I had no hesitancy backing him over Hillary Clinton. Substantively, he was offering policies I supported. There was no doubt in my mind that he would unleash our economy to achieve the robust growth the country needed; that he would rebuild our military power; that he would pursue a foreign policy that put the interests of Americans first; and that he would stop unfairly scapegoating police and would renew the policies that had succeeded in reducing violent crime in the past.

On February 14, William P. Barr was sworn in as attorney general.

As President James Madison observed famously, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” In simple terms, it is the role of religion—not the state—to make men more like angels. It is the role of the state to deal with the external acts of those who behave more like devils.