Petition circulates calling for AG Bill Barr’s disbarment: Report

On Friday, Truthout’s Elliot D. Cohen touted a petition he said was circulating to disbar Attorney General William Barr for his actions regarding the whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump.

Cohen laid out the case against Barr, saying that the AG didn’t pass the whistleblower complaint on to congressional intelligence committees like the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act requires. Instead, Barr said the Justice Department would handle the complaint, in which Barr is mentioned several times.

A tiny petition

But while Cohen seems to think this looks like a conflict of interest and a political motivation for sidestepping the rule of law, the phone call that the whistleblower complaint is focused on did not show that Barr actually did anything wrong, so it’s difficult to see how Barr would use that as a motivation for holding onto the complaint.

In reality, Barr probably looked at the shark-infested congressional waters and thought that Trump would not get a fair shake on the complaint there. And the events of the last several weeks have proven him right.

In fact, the petition Cohen references has, as of Saturday, just over 4,000 signatures. That’s hardly a blip on the radar when previous Change.org petitions have had garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures.

But some say that Barr deserves to be disbarred — after which he would no longer be eligible to serve as attorney general — for other reasons, too, including the fact that his brother-in-law works as White House counsel. Never mind that there is plenty of nepotism all over D.C. (and that most in-law relationships are not even all that close).

Double standards

Indeed, Cohen asserts that Barr should recuse himself nonetheless — and the fact that he hasn’t means he deserves to be disbarred, according to the Truthout contributor. Never mind that Democrats have made similar moves: California Rep. Adam Schiff’s staff met with the whistleblower before the complaint was made, then he lied about it on television.

Has Cohen said that Schiff should recuse himself? No, he has not.

But this blatant and weak attempt to get Barr removed is understandable when you consider that Barr has been very effective at keeping a neutral perspective on impeachment.

Democrats are upset because Barr won’t play into their false narrative that Trump is guilty even without evidence. They’re used to officials like James Comey, James Clapper, and John Bolton, who clearly want to see Trump taken down and were willing to do their part to make it happen.

Looking forward

As Cohen was forced to point out, even the New York City Bar Association did not recommend disbarring Barr, although it said Barr should recuse himself or resign, according to Law.com. But selective accountability is really no accountability at all — and until Democrats learn this, it may be unwise for Republicans to kowtow to their demands, or even to play fair.

Many of the accusations against Trump for his use of Twitter and dealings with the media would vanish if there were any objective understanding of the current political atmosphere. Fairness by Republicans is political suicide when Democrats are making up rules to benefit themselves.



Petition circulates calling for AG Bill Barr’s disbarment: Report Petition circulates calling for AG Bill Barr’s disbarment: Report Reviewed by The News on Donal Trump on November 02, 2019 Rating: 5

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