Trump, Barr, and the Rule of Law

If there is one thing that Attorney General William Barr’s testimony in the Senate last week made abundantly clear, it’s that he is fine with acting less like the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States and more like the personal lawyer for a tantrum-prone client named Donald Trump. Barr dissembled when answering questions about his handling of the Mueller report, then mischaracterized Robert Mueller’s objections to his spin on it, saying that the special counsel had been primarily troubled by how “the media was playing this.” In fact, Mueller had written, in a letter to Barr, that he was concerned because the Attorney General’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his team’s work. Barr described that letter as “snitty” and probably written by “staff people,” thereby dismissing objections that Mueller clearly wanted in the historical record.