During a sweeping speech at a conference of The Federalist
Society, a conservative legal organization, Barr said Democrats
"essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means
necessary, a duly elected government."
Barr's speech drew swift criticism from legal experts, some
of whom decried its ideas as "authoritarian" and
"dangerous." It comes as Trump's use of presidential power faces
intense scrutiny. Lawmakers involved in the impeachment inquiry are trying to
determine whether the president abused the power of the presidency by seeking
to trade military aide to Ukraine for a political favor.
The attorney general has long been a champion of expansive
presidential power, commenting on that he "admires a muscular
executive."
Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University,
testified at Barr's confirmation
hearing earlier this year that he opposed Barr's nomination over
concerns about his views on executive authority. Kinkopf saw the speech in
person, and said Barr's comments were "all very consistent with everything
he's always said."
But putting it together in the way he did yesterday with the
broad sweep, I think it makes it absolutely clear what some of us have always
thought — which is that this is a person who holds dangerous views about the
scope of presidential power," he added.
Barr described a "resistance" that began as soon
as Trump was elected. "The fact of the matter is that in waging a
scorched-earth, no holds barred war of resistance against this administration,
it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and
undermining the rule of law," he said.
The attorney general expressed frustration that Trump has
faced obstacles to implementing his policies, despite the fact that many of them
were outlined for voters before they went to the polls. "While the
president has certainly thrown out the traditional beltway playbook and
punctilio, he was upfront about what he was going to do and the people decided
they wanted him to serve as president," he said.
Kinkopf said he felt Barr was making "a very dangerous
suggestion that dissent and opposition is somehow contrary to democracy — it's
in fact the core and spirit of democracy."
Richard Painter, who was the top ethics lawyer for George W.
Bush, described
the remarks as a "lunatic authoritarian speech."
"While the attorney general is a political appointee of
the president, the attorney general needs to maintain a posture of neutrality
in ongoing investigations and particularly criminal matters," Painter told
NPR.
And yet, Painter said Barr's speech was "extremely
partisan, castigating the so-called resistance, characterizing all those who
were concerned about the Trump administration as being part of the far
left."
Barr said the powers of the executive in the U.S. have been
encroached upon for decades by the other branches of government. "This
process, I think, has substantially weakened the function of the presidency to
the detriment of the nation," he said.
Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota,
says he has seen the opposite — an expansion of executive power under
Trump and previous presidents, including Bush and Barack Obama. "President
Trump has gone further than his predecessors on the policy side," he said.
Kinkopf also viewed Barr's claim as ahistorical. He said
that while Congress strongly reasserted its role in the aftermath of Vietnam,
presidential power has been steadily expanding for decades since then. "I
think since 1981, it's been nothing but an upward line," he said. Claims
that Trump's lawyers are making that he
should be immune from criminal prosecution, Kinkopf added, are
"virtually unprecedented."
Barr also dished out criticism of the federal courts, which
have frequently issued injunctions that acted to freeze controversial Trump
policies, such as the travel ban that restricted entry into the U.S. for
citizens of certain countries.
"It is no exaggeration to say that virtually every
major policy of the Trump administration has been subjected to immediate
freezing by the lower courts," Barr stated. "No other president has
been subjected to such sustained efforts to debilitate his agenda."
The attorney general criticized the courts for considering
the president's motives when they assess the legality of a policy, saying this
amounts to "attempts by courts to act like amateur psychiatrists."
"Well, if that's right, there is very little in the way
of a legal constraint on the president's exercise of his powers," said
Kinkopf. For example, if the president was motivated by a bribe to issue a
pardon, there would be little mechanism to hold him accountable because it's
well within his authority to issue a pardon. "The suggestion that we can't
question his motives, that that's somehow improper, cuts to the heart of the
rule of law."
He added that Trump is providing, in real time and on
Twitter, clear statements about his motivations in a way that other presidents
did not. "We have now a president who tweets his motives right in the
middle of the night, constantly ... and so what's a court to do now that it has
evidence that it never had access to before?
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1 comment:
this article is insane #TDS. Would this article be written about #Fascist Eric Holder?? if not then it's defamation against Barr. case closed.
please take your Trump Anxiety Medications, also see your Mental Health Professional about your Self Harming #TDS STAT
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