ONE AND DONE

It is common knowledge that Donald Trump does not read. But one assumes that the Attorney General of the United States does.

But it is apparent that SwampCreature Barr does not read history. Because if he did he would recognize why President John Adams was denied a second term by the electorate. If SC Barr had read past the chapter headings in the history of the election of 1800, he would have known that the reason Adams lost to Jefferson was the nation's keen resentment of The Sedition Act, which Adams enacted in 1798 and which he employed to prosecute and convict critics of his administration.

Barr recently directed United States Attorneys throughout the country to consider using the more modern version of The Sedition Act (20 years in prison) against Black Lives Matter demonstrators. That is a horrific suggestion. Not inconsistent, though, from an Attorney General who sees a connection between slavery and a government mandate to wear facemasks during a pandemic, and who directed the chemical assault on peaceful demonstrators to clear a church square for a Trump photo-op.

When a significant number of federal prosecutors criticised Barr's sedition directive, Barr was incensed. He issued a statement insisting that as Attorney General, he was in charge of the nation's justice system, not lower level employees of the Department of Justice. He compared the DOJ to a corporate entity, where the top management makes the decisions, not the lower level employees.

But Barr misconceives his role, and the role of federal prosecutors throughout the nation. The Department of Justice is not the Disney Corporation. It is not General Motors. The "lower level employees" of the DOJ have sworn an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States," and "bear true faith and allegiance" to it. There's nothing in that oath that requires them to bear "true faith and allegiance" to Barr's political directives. Indeed the contrary is true.

The DOJ has promulgated a Justice Manual, setting out the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that puts teeth into that oath.  It instructs line prosecutors that they are required to make prosecution decisions "objectively." The law must be "faithfully executed," and before bringing a case, the prosecutor must be persuaded that there is probable cause to believe a federal crime has been committed, and the evidence is strong enough to "obtain and sustain" a conviction.

No matter what Barr says, all line prosecutors are bound by that oath and those Justice Manual requirements.  That's why honorable DOJ prosecutors withdrew from the Roger Stone case when Barr interfered with their sentence recommendation of the President's buddy. And a separate set of prosecutors withdrew from the Michael Flynn matter when Barr insisted on seeking leave of court to drop the case, even though Flynn had twice confessed in open court that he was guilty of lying to the FBI.

Of course now the spin is on, and one of Barr's assistants has blamed the press for accurately quoting Barr: he basically said Barr didn't mean "that kind of sedition" when he urged prosecutors to bring "Sedition "cases. But it became immediately clear that Barr was talking about the Black Lives Matter movement as 'seditious," when the same day, Trump made a campaign speech in which he effectively railed against Black History chapters in school books. These kinds of unamerican education programs would destroy the nation, he said. He didn't use the word "sedition," but that is what he described.

So this election is not so much about Democrats v. Republicans, the economy, or the coronavirus. It's about the advancing rot in the core timbers of the structure of our democracy.

 If your hair is not on fire yet, it should be. 

A bientot.

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