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Judge’s slap at AG William Barr was shameful politicking
By Josh Hammer
nypost.com
March 9, 2020 | 7:18pm | Updated March 10, 2020 | 9:31am
In 2017, as President Trump took office, anti-Trump activists vented rage with pussy hats and other leftist agitprop. But the real work of the #Resistance has been carried out by holdover bureaucrats in the executive branch — and activist judges roaming far beyond their constitutional remit. Witness a senior federal district judge’s unhinged, disingenuous broadside last week against Attorney General William Barr.
Judge Reggie Walton was confronted with a straightforward Freedom of Information Act complaint, a relatively common type of litigation. In this case, the plaintiffs sought an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian “collusion” released last spring.
Walton seized the opportunity to excoriate the attorney general, painting a tendentious narrative that set Barr at loggerheads with his underling Mueller. He also openly questioned whether Barr’s politicized “intent was to create a one-sided narrative” about the report.
The judge, who missed his true calling as an MSNBC talking head, wondered aloud whether Barr “made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse” about the report “in favor of President Trump” and blasted a “lack of candor,” which he said calls “into question” the attorney general’s “credibility.”
The complaint was a rehash of a forgotten anti-Trump drama that should’ve been left forgotten. Back in March 2019, Barr released a summary of the Mueller report’s conclusion that there was zero collusion. The left claimed the summary misrepresented Mueller’s full report, but the special counsel subsequently went before Congress and reiterated that core finding.
Walton’s impudent gripe may earn him media plaudits, but the stubborn facts belie its content.
First, it was line prosecutors who redacted the Mueller report, not Barr himself. Second, the redactions were made in consultation with lawyers on Mueller’s special counsel team — which disproves any alleged legerdemain or political intent on Barr’s part.
Most important, a joint statement last May by DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec and special counsel spokesman Peter Carr made clear that there was “no conflict” between the statements made by Barr and Mueller with respect to the underlying legal question at the time: Both publicly stated that Mueller never concluded that he would have found Trump had obstructed justice but for a DOJ guideline against indicting a sitting president. Put simply, Barr and Mueller were in complete lockstep.
The judge has brought shame to the bench by combining disinformation with an overheated, ad-hominem rebuke. Indeed, if there is anyone in this saga who “made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse” and demonstrated a remarkable “lack of candor” in doing so, it wasn’t Barr. It was the judge.
But perhaps even more important: Who ditched the Framers’ design overnight and made a septuagenarian judge king?
In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as the “least dangerous” of the three branches, because it has “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.” Once upon a time, those words meant something. But over the past six decades, the courts have arrogated tremendous power to themselves at the expense of the two democratically accountable branches.
It is only in this perverse context that Walton’s opinionated rhetoric can be understood. Congress, the executive branch and the American people as a whole have been complicit in allowing the judiciary to run roughshod over us all. When we treat judges as the preeminent dispensers of true political justice, it ought not to come as a surprise when those judges hector elected and/or accountable officials from their lofty pedestal.
More galling than Walton, Judge Carlton Reeves in Mississippi, a progressive favorite, recently disparaged a pro-life law in the Magnolia State as “pure gaslighting” and reminiscent of Jim Crow. And this is to say nothing of the astounding intellectual trickery (and lawlessness) of the judicial #Resistance’s favorite disruptive tool: issuing “nationwide injunctions” to stop Team Trump policy initiatives.
Barr has once again found himself a victim of a well-orchestrated smear campaign. The only thing that makes this episode different is that the culprit’s ostensible job isn’t to spew partisan “hot takes,” but to fairly and neutrally apply the rule of law.
Josh Hammer is a syndicated columnist and of counsel at First Liberty Institute. Twitter: @Josh_Hammer
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