DRIP, DRIP, DRIP

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Some years back I read a book about metal corrosion. I don't know why I picked it up, but I found it fascinating. The take-away: corrosion of iron and steel is absolutely inevitable. The laws of nature demand it. We struggle to avoid it. We paint our bridges, we encase steel supports in concrete, we lubricate our vehicles, and all we can do is put off the day when the bridges rot, the support columns crumble, and the cars rust to powder.  We can delay the process with chemicals, coverings, sacrificial anodes, and other processes, but nature will out. Iron wants to combine with oxygen. Expose it to the elements, and sooner or later it will do so. And we get left with a pile of iron oxide powder called rust.

There are non-materialistic analogs in our sophisticated society: expose a lie to the public, and the underlying truth wants to escape, and will inevitably work its way out and expose the lie (and the liar.) And sooner or later, we get left with a pile of bullshit.

And like metal corrosion, truth sometimes takes days and sometimes takes generations to get to the final product. Sometimes it's quick. Like when the President of the United States goes on a 24-hour out-patient binge and, speaking to a German diplomat repeatedly says that his father was born is a picturesque town in Germany when his father was born in the Bronx, or when he says wind turbines cause cancer, or when he says that he supplied 91 billion dollars to Puerto Rico for hurricane relief when the truth is 2 billion, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. After 8,750 documented lies in 15 months, we seem to accept that our President is a pathological liar and move on.

But for some mysterious reason, we still believe, or at least want to believe, that some of the people around this President are honest. (I thought, for example, Don McGahn was honest, and so was -- --- err,... I'll get back to you on that.)

But I never thought for a moment that William Barr was honest. I had not really paid any attention to this Washington D.C. swamp-lawyer before his nomination by Trump to be our Attorney General. But when I saw him dodge and weave at his confirmation hearings and refuse to commit to publish the full Mueller report, I knew he was but one step removed from his predecessors Sessions and Whitaker, both of whom had lied to Congress.

Any doubts I had about Barr were resolved when he issued his four-page report on the 400-page Mueller report. In my 26 March blog on the subject, after a quick read-through of Barr's four-pager, I wrote:

"this Attorney General was as dishonest as the man who appointed him."

I found three immediate faults with the Barr Report:

1. He neglected to say the Russian interference was all to help Trump.

2. He personally acquitted Trump of obstruction, despite Mueller's conclusion that the evidence did not exonerate Trump. Why? One reason offered up by Barr was that Trump's obstructive conduct was for the most part publicly displayed. This is a non-legal and non-logical conclusion. In fact it is absurd. 

3. He said Trump could not be indicted for obstruction because Mueller, among other reasons, Mueller had not proved the underlying crime of collusion. This is equally non-legal and non-logical. That absurd test would require the acquittal of criminals who obstruct justice so effectively as to hide their underlying criminal conduct. Barr's  conclusion was so mind-boggling that I checked with former prosecutors, all of whom said this was ridiculous and bullshit.

Whence cometh this new Barr Doctrine: i.e., no obstruction lacking proof of an underlying crime?

I did a little digging. I did not have to go far. This was Barr quoting Barr!

Recall, please, that in June, 2018, private citizen Barr, at no one's request, wrote a 19-page exegesis that he sent to Rosenstein and then made public, in which he opined that  

"the obstruction claim is entirely dependent on first finding collusion"

and therefore Mueller was not even entitled to interrogate the President about obstruction

"until [Mueller] has enough evidence to establish collusion."

Wow. That certainly caught the eye of the Trumpists, and sure enough, months later, Barr was nominated to be the chief law enforcement of the United States.

And surprise, surprise, that same piece of bullcrap appears in the Barr 4-pager.

But the rain of truth keeps falling on this AG, and his DOJ badge keeps rusting and rotting away.  We now know that Mueller's people are critical of Barr for underplaying the evidence of Trump's obstructive conduct that could lead to his impeachment. And that they wrote lengthy chapters that could be released to the public. Barr ignored that and instead emphasized "no underlying crime of collusion" even though the Muellerites are now suggesting that the real report finds the Trump team was woefully manipulated by the Russians.

And this is just Week One! The truth will continue to drip and corrode Barr's resistance as long as he continues to avoid the inevitable.

Barr has justified his current and future failure to publish the entire report by saying there are four categories of information that cannot be released.

1. Information obtained via the grand jury process. This is bullshit, because he could simply ask the federal court to release the information because of the "substantial need" to give it to Congress and the public. See 18 USC 3322.

2. Executive privilege. More dishonest bullshit. So far, Barr has said he has not shown the report to the White House. The president has said "No executive privilege claims, give it all to the Congress," then backed away from that. Surprise, surprise. We'll see.

3. Information harmful to the reputation of non-indicted parties.  What? So the entire TCF gets a pass because of course the report is chock full of stuff that would humiliate them?  Give me a break!

4. Information relating to ongoing cases.  Fair enough. This small slice of information can be handled confidentially by the appropriate committees of Congress who handle confidential information all the time.

Will Barr withhold information from Congress pursuant to any of these four claims?  Does a Barr shit in the woods?

My final predictions for the day:

1. If Barr had a shred of reputation before he applied for and won this job, it will be a pile of red/brown-colored dust when he finishes this job.

2. If Barr nevertheless continues to play hide-and-seek with the truth, and emulates the scorpion who stings the frog ferrying him across the river because "it's my nature," a passel of thumb drives containing the entire report will be picked up by a fierce D.C. cyclone and end up clearing the transoms of NBC, CBS, CNN, The NY Times, the Washington Post, and Al Jazeera.

Four Hundred pages. It'll be the best book I have read since the latest biography of Churchill. Yum.

A bientot!

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As my regular readers know, there is no fixed schedule for these posts. If you want a notice of each new posting, send me an email and I will add you to the notice list.  mlondon34@gmail.com