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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sdgla who wrote (1242340)	6/24/2020 7:26:31 PM
From: sylvester80	1 Recommendation Recommended By pocotrader Respond to of 1578294

OOPS! The 'Friday Night Massacre' Spells the Downfall of William Barr CLAIRE O. FINKELSTEIN AND RICHARD W. PAINTER ON 6/23/20 AT 5:08 PM EDT newsweek.com Last week, we wrote an article in Newsweek and a letter to the House Judiciary Committee calling for Attorney General William Barr to keep a longstanding promise to testify before Congress. After the " Friday Night Massacre," in which Barr attempted to fire Geoffrey Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, that appearance is now a full-blown emergency. After Berman refused to resign, Barr issued a public letter on Saturday stating that President Donald Trump had fired him. "I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so," Barr wrote. Trump, however, declined to confirm this decision, insisting later that day that it is "not my department." He added, "I'm not involved." It is not even clear, therefore, that Berman has been fired and, if he has been, who fired him. Someone is not telling the truth. It is now more imperative than ever that Trump's strategist-in-chief immediately explain himself and his relationship to the president's agenda. In particular, Barr needs to tell Congress and the American people why he believes the president has the right to eliminate high-ranking federal officials with impunity, including those engaged in politically sensitive investigations of him or his associates. Yet Barr, not one given to heroics, is in a bind. He cannot render truthful testimony without risking self-incrimination or else incriminating the president. Unless, like Ebenezer Scrooge, Barr is visited by the ghosts of Watergate casualties John Mitchell, Elliot Richardson and Robert Bork, and wakes up willing to divulge his role in Berman's firing and other questionable recent executive branch actions, he should resign—and start consulting with his personal attorney. It appears the "Friday Night Massacre" will spell the downfall of William Barr. The House Judiciary Committee is now preparing to subpoena Barr to require his testimony before them. Assuming the attorney general does appear, as he must, there are questions Congress urgently needs answered. First, why did Barr, and presumably Trump, want to get rid of Berman? Barr offered no explanation, not even pretextual, in his initial statement. Why did Berman represent such a threat that he had to be summarily dispatched without even the fig leaf of a legitimate basis? Berman was investigating at least half a dozen politically sensitive matters and Trump associates, including Giuliani and Lev Parnas; Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew; Deutsche Bank loans to Trump; a bank named Halkbank owned by the Turkish government that Trump had previously discussed with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; illegal use of money by the presidential inauguration committee; further activities relating to Russia and the Trump campaign; and, of course, Michael Cohen and the Stormy Daniels payoffs by "Individual-1," aka Trump.