Tag: Bill Barr

The Ballad Of Barr & Pence: A MAGA Autogolpe That Wasn’t


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When the history of Trumplandia is written, two people will stick out as having changed everything by what they did — or didn’t do: Bill Barr and Mike Pence.

What makes their actions so weird in hindsight is neither one of them was ever mentioned as the “guardrails” that were going to save us from Trump’s excesses. In fact, they were some of the biggest toadies for Trump — until they weren’t at very crucial moments in time.

Bill Barr — at least in my opinion — had a specific purpose when he was originally hired: end the Mueller Investigation. He wrapped that up and did plenty of really shitty things. And then in the 2020 – 2021 timeframe he did something that saved American democracy for four more years: nothing.

He sat on his hands.

So, even though Barr intimately knew on a personal basis how badly Trump wanted DOJ to indict the Bidens, or Hillary or Obama or whomever, he was able to simply slow walk all of Trump’s would-be autocratic moves so they were moot. Without Barr doing that, it’s very possible that all the autocratic things I thought up in 2020 Trump would have done and he would still be president.

Then there’s Mike Pence.

Pence is the consummate Trump sycophant. Or, at least, he was until January 6th. After defending Trump at every turn for any and everything he did, no matter how horrible or autocratic, on January 6th Pence gave American democracy a second chance by simply doing his fucking job. (Which in the specific case of certification was simply to announce the certification, he didn’t really have to do anything other than not nullify the certification by going rouge.)

And, so because of the actions of two people everyone assumed would be Trump’s lapdogs, American democracy was spared for a few years. You honestly could not make such shit up.

What happens next is up to us. We aren’t going to be as lucky, next time.

My Personal Bill Barr Theory


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A shit ton of MAGA cocksuckers are foaming at the mouth about how Bill Barr went dark the last few months and probably pretty much saved American democracy. Given what Barr did with the Mueller Report, what happened?

A surreal situation.

My theory is 20 years from now, we’ll learn a lot more about how close Barr and Mueller were. Mueller was imbued by liberals with qualities he obviously didn’t have — he was actually rather timid about the most important aspects of his charge.

So, my theory is — the moment Barr was in charge, he had a chat with his old friend Mueller –wrap things up NOW for the sake of the country. Then Barr strangled the report in its crib, as it were. And the moment Trump felt in the clear, he turned around and got himself impeached.

But that was the extent of Barr’s desire to facilitate Trump’s more sinister instincts. There were abuses here and there on Barrs part, but the election wasn’t it close enough for it to be an issue, so Barr was able to protect what’s left of our democracy simply through inaction.

And, really, the wild part about all of this is every day Barr sits on his hands, the better positioned Biden is. So, if we can just get Barr at least into the end of December, that gives Trump only 20 days to go nuts and wreak havoc.

Wait, What? My Webstats, The Unredacted Mueller Report & Trump’s Taxes



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something weird is happening in my Webstats. When weird things happen there, I have absolutely no context. All I know that it’s happening. So, here’s the weird thing: twice in the last week or so, someone has randomly looked at some of my writing leading up to the Mueller Report.

I’ve given it some thought, and there are three options:

  1. Someone knows something about the unredacted report, given that a judge is looking at it right now
  2. Someone agrees with me that Mueller and Barr may have had a “gentlemen’s agreement” to wrap it up as quickly as possible for “the sake of the country.”
  3. Their interest in what I wrote isn’t about the Mueller Report, but Trump’s taxes.

My reasoning for the last one is this: if SCOTUS rules against Trump, it’s at least POSSIBLE that we could be in for a severe political crisis, so severe some pretty fucking surreal things could happen just a few months before the election.

I guess there’s a fourth possibility — someone knows something and they know that any crisis about the unredacted Mueller Report would be the first of Trump’s ill-gotten second term.

Don’t Sleep On Bill Barr

Bill Barr right now.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Bill Barr continues to be very, very quiet. I can only assume he’s going to wait until just the right moment to hand down a slew of criminal referrals that “prove” Trump’s fucking batshit insane Ukraine-Democrat conspiracy theory as the “real” origin of the Mueller investigation.

Trump’s obsession with this fucking bonkers conspiracy theory is yet another reason why we have to begin to accept that while Trump may not be an actual Russian agent, he sure is damn close to one. All I got is his needs and the needs of the Russian government overlap so well — and he’s a very dumb and greedy fucktard — that he really, really wants an excuse to pardon both Manafort and Flynn. What he would get out of this, I don’t know.

The real issue is — how successful would Barr doing this be? Probably initially, it would do exactly House Trump wants it to do — change the media narrative. But after about 24 hours of Maggie Haberman cooing about the political genius of House Trump, it would begin to sink in what an astonishing abuse of power this is.

I say this only because I’m slowly beginning to believe the impeachment train has left the station. I say this in the sense that this isn’t going down like the Mueller Report. We have Trump dead-t0-rights on impeachable behavior. So all the road blocks Trump threw in the path of the impeachment process would not likely work as well as House Trump might believe.

Growing numbers of people are so angry at Trump that the momentum is there to at least impeach him. I still think strictly on a political level, he’s going to be acquitted. But we’ve just started this process. Things are likely to grow extremely surreal on any number of levels before we finally find out Trump’s fate.

But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I still can’t get a handle on the endgame in any meaningful manner. It’s anybody’s ballgame at this point.

What Was Bob Mueller’s Relationship To Bill Barr At The Time His Report Was Finished?

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now What.

It’s too soon to suggest anything unethical, but there are some datapoints about the end of the Mueller investigation that leave me uneasy.

Bob Mueller is a lifelong Republican.
He is very well respected. He’s an American hero.
Bill Bar is an old buddy.

Mueller abruptly wrapped up his investigation the Trump Administration soon after Barr formally settled into his job as the head of Justice. Given what has come out, Barr is at the center of a massive scandal. Barr does not seem to have the best interests of the nation or justice at heart.

Someone should look into this.

A House Trump Death Rattle (Maybe)

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m reluctant to say we’re in any type of late-stage Watergate situation just yet. Watergate’s conclusion came about because of a very specific set of circumstances that, because of a lack of precedent, we’ve come to believe is a forgone conclusion.

As I’ve written before, this is not 1974 and Trump is not Nixon. Republicans have no shame and crave power for power’s sake. As such, even though every other metric could be against Trump, Republicans could simply deny it all and stand firm. It’s hard for a liberal democracy to have a functioning Constitution when one of its major parties believes you can only impeach a president if they gain from it politically.

I guess what I’m saying is — the entire fate of the United States rests on Trump, well, being Trump. I would go so far as to say at this point it would actually be out of character for Trump not to do something so completely indefensible, so completely and demonstrably beyond the pale of any type of normal human behavior, that Republicans will find themselves at last defending the absolutely indefensible. If we’ve gotten this far into this situation and we’re not thinking that maybe the Deep State might be the good guys, well,oh boy.

In fact, I will go so far as to say we’re looking for the wrong signs. We’re looking for a major Republican to be Barry Goldwater. Nope. The best we can maybe hope for is a surreal version of The Pence Pivot. If Trump gets the whistleblower murdered, or tweets out a dick pic or tweets the n-word to Obama, Republican leaders will simply say they REALLY voted for Pence and why are you asking the question.

Even then, they won’t even hold an impeachment trial in the Senate.

Having said all that, I would like to tell AOC and a few other people floating around that there’s a chance that things are going to get so bad, so surreal that they are going to be given a masterclass on leadership in real time. I watched on 9/11 as then President Bush simply deflated. He ran away. The nation, for a moment, was leaderless. For a few crucial hours, Rudy was our president.

All I’m saying is, if things get as absolutely surreal as they look like they may, history is watching. They say one’s character comes out best in extreme situations. A few of our elected leaders may be given the opportunity to tell us who they really are, for better or worse.

But we’re not quite there yet. Maybe Bill Barr has proof TrumpUkraine is all an evil plot on the part of the Deep State. Again, at this point, Chris Wallace might suggest the “optics” on that one might not be so great for House Trump.

Maybe the Deep State is like the Second Foundation? Maybe they’re protecting the Constitution? We’ll see.

Honest Question: Why Is Bill Barr Still A Free Man?

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

What the fuck is going on with Attorney General Bill Barr? He’s in the middle of a criminal conspiracy disguised as a the Executive Branch and…nothing. No one seems to be calling for his resignation. It’s like since Rudy is the lightning rod, Barr is free to go about his business being the demonstrably deeply criminal leader of the Justice Department.

There’s one specific issue I would like to be looked in — what was the exact sequence of events that led Bob Mueller to end his investigation into the firing of James Comey? Something about that particular event doesn’t smell right. One thing about Mueller is he became an avatar for a lot of liberal rag against the Trump Administration. We imbued him with a lot of qualies that he may — or may not — actually possess. He’s a lifelong Republican and Bill Barr’s friend.

Given the sheer depth of criminal behavior that Barr has presided over at the Justice Department, that makes me wonder that maybe he might have suggested Mueller wrap things up in time for Trump to start is 2020 re-election campaign. It’s pretty conspicuous how Mueller fell on his sword for Trump in any number of different ways. A lot of avenues of investigation simply were not looked into.

People who seemed bound to get indicted never were. I mean, Don Jr. is just as conspicuous in his conspicuous need to commit crimes as his father. I have no idea what happened, but it seems like now that it’s clear that Trump’s running the Executive Branch like a mafia don that maybe someone should look into that.

Barr has already done enough to warrant him being in jail for contempt of Congress. If I was going to use the House’s inherent contempt powers, Barr is the guy I would use it on. That guy needs to suffer politically somehow. He needs to experience some sort of consequences for his behavior.