Daily Read: NYC Bar Asks Congress to Scrutinize Attorney General

In a six page letter, the New York City Bar Association urged Congress to "commence formal inquiries into a pattern of conduct by Attorney General William P. Barr that threatens public confidence in the fair and impartial administration of justice." 

The bar association letter discusses four specific instances of public comments that were inconsistent with the duties of the Attorney General

to act impartially, to avoid even the appearance of partiality and impropriety, and to avoid manifesting bias, prejudice, or partisanship in the exercise of official responsibilities are bedrock obligations for government lawyers. In the context of pending investigations, government lawyers also are obliged to be circumspect in their public statements and to avoid prejudging the outcomes of those investigations.

The letter also remarks that the specific "comments follow and are reminiscent of Mr. Barr’s earlier mischaracterizations of the Mueller Report, prior to his release of a redacted version of it, in which Mr. Barr claimed the special counsel had found insufficient evidence of any obstruction of justice by President Trump—a material mischaracterization of the Mueller Report and a proposition rejected by more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors based on the facts set forth in the Mueller Report."

In brief, the four instances are:

• On October 11, 2019, in an invitation-only speech at the University of Notre Dame, Mr. Barr launched a partisan attack against “so called ‘progressives’” for supposedly waging a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.”
• On November 15, 2019, in a speech at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, Mr. Barr again vilified “progressives” and “the Left” (characterizing as “the other side” those who “oppose this President”) in highly partisan terms.
• On December 3, 2019, drawing from earlier remarks, Mr. Barr warned at a DOJ awards ceremony that “the American people have to . . . start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” and “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.”
• On December 10, 2019, in a television interview soon after DOJ’s Inspector General released a report finding no improper political motivation in the FBI’s commencement of a counterintelligence investigation into alleged ties between the Trump-Pence campaign and Russian officials in 2016, Mr. Barr publicly rejected the Inspector General’s findings, asserting instead that a separate ongoing investigation into the FBI’s actions that he personally had directed would likely reach a different conclusion.

The letter asks for Congressional oversight of Attorney General Barr because, in short,

In a troubling number of instances, Mr. Barr has spoken and acted in a manner communicating an impression that he views himself as serving as the Attorney General not for the entire nation, but more narrowly for certain segments of society—whether defined in terms of religion, ideology (his own “side,” to borrow the language of Mr. Barr’s Federalist Society speech) or party affiliation.