Trump's Roy Cohn having second thoughts?
by digby
Oh my. It looks like Bill Barr might be having second thoughts about being Trump's Roy Cohn:
Attorney General Bill Barr was "surprised and angry" to find that President Trump had grouped him together with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani during a controversial July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine, a source "familiar with Barr's thinking" tells the AP.
Between the lines: The anonymous leak to the AP suggests a possible effort by Barr to distance himself from the Ukraine scandal that ignited a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump last week. The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the scandal alleges that Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election by asking Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, and that both Giuliani and Barr appeared to be involved.
"I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it," Trump told Zelensky, according to a summary of the call released by the White House.
Justice Department officials say Barr was not aware of the phone call until mid-August. The acting director of national intelligence referred the whistleblower complaint as a possible violation of campaign finance law, but the Justice Department declined to open an investigation
What to watch: Democrats have called on Barr to recuse himself from all matters related to the Ukraine investigation, since he is named in the whistleblower complaint and may have been involved in the administration's efforts to stop it from being turned over to Congress.
Giuliani and Barr are likely to face scrutiny from the House Intelligence Committee, which has already subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduled a series of depositions and hearings next week as part of its impeachment investigation.
Perhaps it's belatedly occurring to Barr that his vaunted "unitary executive" theory might just have a little flaw: what happens if a malevolent, psychologically damaged imbecile somehow becomes president? Indeed, the checks and balances Barr so abhors were put in place for exactly that possibility.
That Barr has used Trump to advance his theory without any care for the fact that Trump is the last person who should have such powers shows either that Barr's brain has been rotted by Fox News or he is as malevolent as Trump. Either way I'm guessing he didn't think Trump could take him down. He may very well be wrong about that.
He is the John Mitchell of our time.
Update: As emptywheel points out, none of this is relevant as to why Barr should have recused himself.
It does not matter at all whether Bill Barr was surprised to hear the President roping him into framing his opponent’s son (though we should not believe he was surprised until the Attorney General says that publicly himself, preferably under oath). It does not matter when Demers learned of the substance of the complaint, it matters when Barr did, and whether it preceded other actions he took.
What matters is whether Barr learned he was named in the transcript before the DOJ made the decision there was no crime there. What matters is whether Barr knew he was implicated before making the decision not to recuse in advance of a prosecutorial decision made while lacking all the facts. What matters is whether Barr knew he was named in the transcript before getting an OLC opinion justifying withholding the complaint. (h/t F for the last point)
The AP story doesn’t tell us that. Instead, it tells us everything we don’t need to know.
Bill Barr will never recuse himself from anything to do with Trump. Trump has made that a condition of being the Attorney General and everyone in the world knows it. Bill Barr certainly does.
If, for some reason, he does end up doing that we'll know that he and Trump have split the sheets.
.
