That One Time Bill Barr Did The Right Thing

Bill Barr is no one’s idea of a hero. His application to be Attorney General consisted of a mash note to Donald Trump explaining that actually the president is above the law (ed. note: this should have a TM symbol). He used the position to undermine the prosecutions of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, harass Hillary Clinton, and flog ridiculous theories about election fraud and hordes of uniformed Antifa soldiers flying around the country to throw cans of soup at cops.

Jowly Roy Cohn protected the president at every turn, defying congressional subpoenas and making laughable arguments in court about magical immunity from prosecution, investigation, and testimony. FFS, he even sicced the DOJ on Melania’s former friend to stop her writing a book and tried to convince a court that calling E. Jean Carroll too ugly to rape was part of Trump’s official presidential duties.

But Barr did manage to prevent his boss from firing FBI Director Chris Wray and installing Devin Nunes’s lackey Kash Patel as second in command at the agency, and for that we must be grateful.

As Politico reported this morning, Trump was on a tear last spring to get rid of his own nominee to lead the FBI. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for Bill Barr. Also the gross incompetence of everyone around him, but that goes without saying.

The problem with firing Wray, for a White House staffed with neophytes and riven with dissension, was just how to do it. Aides who were periodically tasked with engineering Wray’s dismissal had little idea how to pull off such a maneuver without creating massive political blowback, two former officials said. The Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, had been rebuffing the White House’s demands to fire Wray, who was widely respected on Capitol Hill. And Trump, always easily distracted, rarely followed up his outbursts with action.

In late April, Barr showed up at the White House to meet with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, only to be intercepted by Johnny McEntee, the 29-year-old former intern who somehow became Trump’s chief loyalty enforcer, conducting regular purges of supposed fifth columnists in the executive branch.

Parked in the Roosevelt room to cool his heels with Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Barr soon lost patience and stormed into Meadows’ office, shouting “What the fuck is going on?”

Later that day in a meeting with Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, it emerged that Trump wanted to replace Wray with Evanina and make Patel deputy director. To his credit, Barr flatly refused to go along with it, threatening to resign if the White House went through with the plan. And Cipollone, never willing to be the first guy to do the right thing, but occasionally willing to be the second, agreed.

And so the plan fizzled out.

The White House ultimately backed off on the plan once they realized Barr would quit, according to two of the former Trump officials.

“They were hoping it would be a fait accompli,” one said — and Barr would just make the personnel change happen.

After the election, Trump tried again to get Patel installed as deputy director of the CIA, en route to putting him in charge of the whole agency. He was eventually talked out of it, but not before Haspel threatened to resign if the White House saddled her with a political hack like Patel.

And the Republic was saved, thanks to gross incompetence, presidential ADD, and the unexpected discovery of a vestigial vertebra in an otherwise spineless attorney general.

Thus ends the story of that one time Bill Barr did the right thing. THE END.

Inside Trump’s push to oust his own FBI chief [Politico]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.