The Wheels Come Off William Barr's Kiddie Car As Rod Rosenstein Pedals Away

ERIN SCHAFF / THE NEW YORK TIMES

It is no surprise that Donny Ten Thousand Lies' top Justice Department posts would be occupied by obedient toadies.  Like any mob boss, Trump considers himself to be above the law, which means there was no question that William Barr was a ringer from the moment he was nominated by Trump to be attorney general.  The jury had been out on Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein until Robert Mueller's report was out and he too was revealed to be a kisser of presidential ass. 

Then only hours before Barr slouched up to Capitol Hill to be questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was revealed that Mueller (correctly) believes that Barr and Rosenstein intentionally mischaracterized his final report on the 22-month Russia investigation in an effort to influence public opinion and allow Trump to falsely claim "complete and total exoneration."   

In a letter to Barr, the special counsel objected to that fawningly favorable narrative, which he said failed to capture "the context, nature and substance" of his report, especially as it pertained to obstruction of justice," of which Barr and Rosenstein dutifully cleared the president in a crass after-the-fact swipe of the whitewash brush. 

Mueller also twice pushed Barr to release more of his findings in late March, according to news reports. 

After receiving the letter, Barr twice lied to Congress in claiming ignorance about Mueller's view, prompting calls for his resignation from Democratic bigs for whom initiating impeachment proceedings against Trump is gaining traction.  This is because of Trump's continuing abuse of power and more damning picture the Mueller report paints regarding his obstruction attempts, as well as the underlying asininity of the Democrats' long-game strategy to investigate Trump to a fare the well in the face of a constitutional crisis amidst an ongoing national nightmare. 

Oh, and that the Justice Department is resisting setting a date for a willing Mueller to testify to Congress about his report.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer and all-around asshat, helpfully threw another grenade on the fire by declaring that "Mueller . . .  shouldn't be complaining or whining now that he didn't get [his report] described correctly."  

Given those bombshells -- which news outlets described as "stunning" but were anything but given AG's dutiful sock puppetry and the battle lines already drawn between House Democrats who are investigating a squirming Trump, his family and business dealings on multiple fronts and a White House desperate to run out the clock all the way to the 2020 election through stonewalling and court challenges --  Barr's appearance on Wednesday morning before the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee was likely to be anticlimactic.  

It was as Barr confirmed again that he is, in effect, Trump's lawyer and not even remotely independent, and believes Trump is above the law, a perverse -- and richly Nixonian -- point of view.  Come to think of it, the AG believes that he's above the law, too. 

To wit:

* Barr said he did not misrepresent Mueller's report despite the special counsel's views in his letter, which Barr called "snitty," although Barr did just that in sewing confusion about what Mueller had found.

* Barr asserted Trump had been "falsely accused" of coordinating his campaign with Russia, and that helped inform the decision to not charge him with obstructing justice. 

* Barr claimed Trump did not obstruct justice even when he told White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller.  (He backed off when McGahn threatened to resign.) 

* Barr justified his exoneration of Trump's obstruction through a bizarre bit of pretzel logic -- if a president becomes grouchy because he believes his presidency is being undermined, then it's okay to obstruct.    

* Barr believed that it would be "inappropriate" for Muller, as a prosecutor, to turn his work over to Congress for possible action such as impeachment. 

* Barr blamed the media for "reading too much" into his initial summary of the report "because the body politic was in a state of high agitation." 

* Barr would not comment on questions as to whether Trump has suggested criminal investigations of those who do not support him although he has repeatedly and publicly done so. 

Committee Republicans predictably focused their questions not on Trump or Mueller's report but on Hillary Clinton's emails and the former FBI officials who opened the Russia investigation.  

Minority Democrats on the committee pressed Barr on several points.  

Senator Patrick Leahy challenged Barr on why he did not acknowledge the concerns expressed by Mueller’s letter at an earlier hearing, to which the AG replied, "I don’t know." 

Barr was supposed to return to Capitol Hill on Thursday for an appearance before the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee, but has declined the invitation because he demanded that he set the terms of how he is questioned and by whom and committee Democrats refused to capitulate. 

Gotta keep that whitewash going. 

LEAH MILLS / REUTERS

Rosenstein, as the deputy attorney general who picked up the pieces after Trump axed FBI Director James Comey, appointed Mueller as special counsel and seemed to come to his defense as the Russia scandal heat got turned up, finally was outted in the days after he and Barr released that wildly misleading summary of the Mueller report intended to try to exonerate Trump. 

By the time Rosenstein announced his long expected resignation on Monday, effective May 11, he had become marked "as some weird hybrid of L. Patrick Gray and Uriah Heep, with a dollop of Ottoman eunuch in there somewhere," as Charles Pierce indelicately if accurately put it. 

When Rosenstein joined the Justice Department way back in 1990 during the administration of George H.W. Bush, it was less partisan and more independent than other Cabinet departments, which is just as Congress had intended it when creating the department in 1870 with a mandate to follow the letter and spirit of the law, even when doing so is uncomfortable for the president or his appointees. 

Rosenstein did not always fail in living up to this high standard, but he failed with a reliable if shocking obsequiousness when it mattered the most. 

He failed in May 2017 when he provided Trump political cover for firing FBI Director James Comey by writing the memo that enabled Trump to claim he was firing Comey for good cause.  He failed in March when he joined Barr in intentionally  mischaracterizing the Mueller report's conclusions.  He failed last week when he stood by Barr -- literally -- at a press conference in which Barr acted more like Trump's lawyer than a real attorney general.  And he failed on Monday in sending a resignation letter to Trump that obviously was intended to burnish the president's tattered image.  

"Gaze in awe," wrote Pierce of this mindblowing performance.

Click HERE for a searchable version of the Mueller report.

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal
and related developments.