Government

Bill Barr Did WHAT? How Is This Not The Biggest Story In The Country Right Now?

Oh look, the DOJ dropped an investigation against his client as soon as he took over.

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(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The fact that there are state election boards currently contemplating invalidating tens of thousands of votes is the only thing that keeps this off the top of every news outlet right now but the Attorney General potentially using his office to help his private book of business is… not great.

Last night, Reuters broke the story that Attorney General Bill Barr, while working at Kirkland & Ellis, represented Caterpillar in a billion-dollar tax case that miraculously was dropped by the DOJ one week after Barr took over the Justice Department:

A week after Barr was nominated for the job of attorney general, Justice officials in Washington told the investigative team in the active criminal probe of Caterpillar to take “no further action” in the case, according to an email written by one of the agents and reviewed by Reuters.

The decision, the email said, came from the Justice Department’s Tax Division and the office of the deputy attorney general, who was then Rod Rosenstein.

Ah, well, if Rod Rosenstein blessed it while fresh off telling his department to kidnap children then it must be legit! This is a quick reminder that no one should ever do business with these dirtbags forever… looking your way, King & Spalding clients. The Justice Department makes mistakes… but when the allegation is “you stole 2.3 billion from the government” the question is whether it should really be $1.8 billion, not “maybe it’s zero.”

Potential conflicts of interest, whether real or apparent, often arise when high-powered lawyers switch between private practice and government service. Bruce A. Green, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Fordham Law School, said it is not unheard of for attorney generals to have clients who had business before the DOJ. He noted that in 2009, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, recused himself from a case involving Swiss Bank UBS, a prior client.

But Green said he could not recall a case where agents were told to take no further action on a matter involving an incoming attorney general’s former client without some kind of explanation. “Why would you just stop?” he asked.

Why the f**k indeed!

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Caterpillar was routing profits through Switzerland where they had negotiated a massive tax break for themselves. Those facts don’t seem to be in dispute. They just said their massive dodge scheme was legal. A grand jury had already heard these allegations and said, “Yup, those guys look dirty.” The DOJ sent agents to raid Caterpillar’s corporate offices, which — and I cannot stress this enough as a former white-collar defense attorney myself — is NOT NORMAL. Usually in cases against a blue chip company the government will just politely ask you to turn over documents. They raid your offices when they think you’re laundering El Chapo’s money, not when they think you’ve under withheld.

Say what you will about the United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration but it does not pursue criminal matters against corporations lightly. This was a case that they clearly saw as a slam dunk and one that every level of the Justice Department was cool with pursuing from 2017, when the grand jury rendered its thoughts, until the week after Barr got the job.

And then… it all stopped. When Caterpillar’s defense attorney became the Attorney General.

If the country ever gets a chance to come up from a rampaging pandemic, economic meltdown, and bungling coup attempts, hopefully this can get more attention.

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Exclusive: U.S. investigators were told to take ‘no further action’ on Caterpillar, ex-client of Barr [Reuters]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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