Even people who gave Barr the benefit of the doubt are now suggesting he's 'a Trump toady'

With President Trump veering toward his own version of George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment with his "total exoneration" victory lap on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's still-secret report, Attorney General William Barr could have tried to be a scrupulously neutral arbiter. Instead, even people who gave the new attorney general the benefit of the doubt are throwing up their hands at his handling of Mueller's report and the counterterrorism investigation that preceded it.

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe called Barr's comments Wednesday about how he thinks there was "spying" on the Trump campaign "utterly jaw-dropping," adding: "How Barr, whom I once worked with and respected, can look himself in the mirror or sleep at night is beyond me." Investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald apologized for thinking Barr was "honorable" and people were "overreacting with fear he would be a Trump toady. ... I was wrong. Barr is a hack."

"I am not one of the many people looking to think ill of Barr," writes Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes. But his comments about "spying" were "indefensible," "incendiary," and "reckless." Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper raised similar concerns on CNN Wednesday night.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"Barr is wading into a political and legal quagmire here and of course he knows that," argues Bloomberg Opinion editor Tim O'Brien:

"Trump has complained, notably, that Jeff Sessions didn't act like Roy Cohn when he was attorney general," O'Brien concludes. "Cohn was a ruthless and sleazy attack dog who taught Trump how to weaponize the legal system to get his own way as a young developer in New York. Barr certainly isn't anything like Cohn. But he's trying."