Judge: Barr sowing public mistrust with Mueller report handling

[swag]

Source: Politico

By JOSH GERSTEIN 04/16/2019 04:29 PM EDT

Attorney General William Barr has created public distrust about whether the Justice Department is committed to sharing as much as possible about the Russia probe's findings, a federal judge said on Tuesday.

“The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency,” U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a Freedom of Information Act suit demanding access to a report detailing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush, did not elaborate on what actions or statements by the attorney general have generated those perceptions.

Democrats and other critics have faulted Barr for adding his own conclusions favorable to President Donald Trump into a letter sent to Congress last month summarizing the top-line findings of the report. In addition, Barr has warned that he plans to make redactions to the report on grounds such as privacy and grand jury secrecy, prompting more complaints.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/16/judge-barr-mistrust-mueller-1278030

[durablend]

1. All part of the plan

Public mistrusts justice department = "why don't we get rid of it"

And I doubt Barr gives two shits what the public (aside from the knucker-draggers) think of him.

[Historic NY]

2. Say it like it is, Judge..

he is consciously lying to protect Individual#1. Mr Barr has done this in the past and is doing it again. We have no confidence in this US Attorney General, he is failing the People of the United States by word & deed.

[Chakaconcarne]

3. So follow through and review the redactions as part of the FOIA case.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/16/politics/judge-foia-doj-redactions-mueller-report/index.html

[Honeycombe8]

4. No wonder Trump wants to "get rid of the judges."

Although I think Trump was referring to Judges for the asylum seekers and illegal immigrants generally, I think it was a slip that he didn't actually say that. He just said "judges."

This is why. They aren't reliably loyal to him.

[Perseus]

5. I will rephrase the first part of the first paragraph

"Attorney General William Barr has created public distrust about whether the Justice Department is committed to not working as a non-political hack, but instead servicing and representing the people of the USA and not a crook who sits in the presidency today."

Or something like that...

[Blue Owl]

6. To put it mildly!

n/t

[PeeJ52]

7. Damn liberal judges!!! Oh... this is a G.W. Bush judge?... Oh well, there goes that theory...

He was presiding head of the FISA court too, appointed by chief justice John Roberts? Gonna be hard to spin this one tRumpy. It's not nice to be saying bad things about judges...

[elleng]

13. Right, Reggie Walton IS a good guy; we've seen him before.

During his FISC tenure, Judge Walton was "exceptionally concerned" about the NSA's "flagrant violation" of the court orders regarding privacy, and he accused the agency of "misinterpretations."[5]

The Washington Post reported, "fellow judges and lawyers who appear before him say Walton's decisions do not appear to be guided by politics but by a tough-on-crime mentality." Walton is known by local defense attorneys as a "long ball hitter" – a judge willing to impose long sentences in order to deter future crimes.[4] In fall 2005, the judge was driving his wife and daughter to the airport for a vacation when he came across an assailant attacking a cab driver on the side of the road. Walton tackled the assailant and subdued him until police arrived. The D.C. police spokesperson noted in response, "God bless Judge Walton. I surely wouldn't want to mess with him."[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Walton

[Mc Mike]

8. I'll say.

[Evolve Dammit]

9. Let's blow up the judicial system. The fixer AG wants an autocracy.

[Ford_Prefect]

10. Its all part of the Putin Agenda. Destabilize the US judicial system which threatens to interfere

with and expose Russian mafia investments and thievery.

[kag]

15. Bingo.

Pretty much every shitstorm coming out of this "administration" is not accidental. It has been contrived and engineered by the one person in the world who wants nothing more than the downfall and defeat of the USA, NATO, the EU, etc.

[Ford_Prefect]

18. Shhhhhh...Don't tell that to the MSM talking heads. They think that's

Tinfoil CT. They still don't acknowledge the effect voter purges, illegal gerrymandering, and direct interference in the voting process by GOP operatives had any meaningful effect on 2016. They still think the only hacking during the election was by the Russian troll farm and that it had no tangible influence on voting tallies at any level. MSM will shout a headline for 5 minutes. Don't ask them for substance or analysis as it often seems they no longer invest in it if can't fit into a tweet or a banner across the bottom of the screen.

For that matter don't bother the DCCC with the information either. They still like to feel that they alone set critical agendas for the Party. They would appear to have been in denial since chads were hung in Florida.

Of course, NSA, CIA, FBI, German and French intel could put them straight on that, never mind what Chris Steele already spoke to in his report.

[Evolve Dammit]

19. I suspect you are absolutely right

[redstateblues]

11. Yeah Whatever. As a judge you have power. Do something

[Bayard]

12. Rachel did a great show last night

Long lead up, going into what happened in Panama under Bush I. Basically this same information:

On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the “Black Friday” market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.

When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.

What’s different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out.

When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions. It is better to think of Barr’s summary as a redacted version of the full OLC opinion. That’s because the “summary” took the form of 13 pages of written testimony. The document was replete with quotations from court cases, legal citations, and the language of the OLC opinion itself. Despite its highly detailed analysis, this 13-page version omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion. And there was evidently no justifiable reason for having withheld those parts from Congress or the public.

An excellent read of the facts:
https://www.justsecurity.org/63635/barrs-playbook-he-misled-congress-when-omitting-parts-of-justice-dept-memo-in-1989/

[neohippie]

14. Barr is tainted and always has been

Remember the BCCI scandal, CIA bank that also serviced Russia, tied to Bush crime family Guess who tried to stop the indictments none other than William Barr

You know how people tell us Trump's finances are too complex for anyone to understand, there's a reason they're so complex, because that's what you do when you're trying to hide things


https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/bcci-indictment-pushed-for-by-mueller-was-blocked-by-trump-ag-pick-william-barr-in-1991/

“Mr. Mueller indicated to Mr. Rivera and to me as well that they would prefer that our indictment — that we work aggressively on it as much as possible… I received a phone call a little bit before noon on August 22 from Denis Saylor who indicated to me that I was directed not to return the BCCI indictment. And I asked who was directing me not to return it, and he said Attorney General William Barr…” (US Atty Lehtinen)

“As Robert Mueller III, the Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department now in charge of the BCCI investigation, testified in October, 1991: BCCI was not an ordinary bank. It was set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs are extraordinarily complex. Its offers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection” (“The BCCI Affair A Report to the Committee on Foreign RelationsUnited States Senate by Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank BrownDecember 1992“) https://archive.org/stream/TheBCCIAffair/The-BCCI-Affair_djvu.txt

[Maxheader]

16. Stumpy being the enemy...take the whole

herd of gop handjobs in the govt..throw section 3 clause 1 at them
when they ask why they are being arrested...

SECTION 3. Clause 1. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open court.

I'll be glad to testify and I'm sure I can find another "witness" to the traitors crimes against
americu...

[DirtEdonE]

17. trump, barr, mueller - this entire report fiasco

These are just more examples of why people in this nation no longer have any respect for the rule of law.

The rule of law begins at the top. There is no rule of law at the top. There is no rule of law.