William
Barr Can Stop Donald Trump’s Attempted Coup
By David Rohde
November 11, 2020
Twelve days before the
election, an associate of William Barr’s argued to me that the Attorney
General deserved credit for his performance during the final
six weeks of the Presidential campaign. The associate contended that Barr,
rather than reinforcing wild claims from Donald
Trump that would have served the President’s reëelection
effort, had gone quiet. In some ways, the associate was correct. In October,
after President Trump publicly demanded that Barr launch a criminal
investigation into Hunter and Joe
Biden, the Attorney General took no action. Barr also declined to
announce the results of an investigation by a federal prosecutor, John Durham,
into the F.B.I.’s probe of the 2016 Trump campaign. This spring, in a move that
infuriated Trump, Barr cleared Barack Obama and the elder Biden of any
wrongdoing in 2016, stating, “I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a
criminal investigation of either man.” The associate insisted that Barr’s
comments—and his silence—were intentional, and said, “The real October surprise
is Bill Barr.” Unable to corroborate the claims and unsure of what to
believe, I didn’t write a story about the conversation.
On
Monday night, Barr’s apparent silence ended. The Attorney General issued
a memorandum authorizing
federal prosecutors to investigate the President’s specious claims of
nationwide voter fraud, involving tens of thousands of ballots and, it seems,
thousands of election officials in multiple states. The memo boosted the Trump
campaign’s fantastical claims that the election fraud had occurred under the
watch of two Republicans: the secretary of state in Georgia and the city
commissioner overseeing the vote count in Philadelphia. Barr hedged in the
memo, writing that “while serious allegations should be handled with great
care, specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a
basis for initiating federal inquiries.”
Richard
Pilger, the Justice Department official who oversees investigations into
election crimes, immediately quit. “Having familiarized myself with the new policy
and its ramifications,” he wrote in an e-mail to colleagues obtained by the Times,
“I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes
Branch.” Barr’s memo, despite the caveats, violates a long-running Justice
Department practice of not investigating election fraud until after local
officials have completed counting and certifying the vote. The practice is
designed precisely to prevent federal prosecutors from pressuring local
officials to change the outcome of an election. In short, it is intended to
prevent unhappy incumbents from subverting the democratic process.
Barr
released his memo on the same day that he met Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, who, in a speech on the Senate floor, defended the President’s right
to challenge the election results. Just before McConnell’s speech, Trump had
fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who has been viewed as insufficiently loyal
since he failed to back Trump’s calls to deploy troops in American cities,
against citizens protesting the police killing of George
Floyd, last spring. Trump also appointed Michael Ellis, a partisan
loyalist, to be the general counsel of the National Security Agency. Rumors
swirled that Trump also plans to fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray,
and C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel. Meanwhile, Emily W. Murphy, a Trump appointee
who is the administrator of the General Services Administration, said that the
results of the election were not “clear” and blocked Biden aides from using
office space in federal buildings to begin planning the transition of power.
Throughout
the Trump Presidency, journalists have debated how to respond to the
President’s conspiracy theories, provocations, and lies. Some advocated
ignoring them, on the ground that reporting on them risks amplifying them.
Others felt that the President’s false claims should be taken seriously, that
ignoring them normalizes his behavior and inures Americans to the risks it
represents. The President’s actions since Election Day are unprecedented. As my
colleague Masha Gessen wrote, Trump is trying to achieve an
“autocratic breakthrough” and to discredit the election results that would end
his rule. His chances of succeeding appear low, but it is important to state
that the President of the United States is attempting to carry out a coup.
Over
the weekend, I spoke with a current Administration official. Echoing comments
that Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney had made to the Wall Street Journal, the official said that the
President needs some time to process his defeat. In earlier conversations, the
official had told me that Trump believes that career government officials are
politically biased against him—and that Trump’s claims of a “deep state” coup
are sincere, and not simply political posturing. The official added that he
personally believes that although the tally has not been finalized, Trump has
no path to victory; he thought that some voter fraud would be found in
Pennsylvania—such as ballots cast using the names of dead people—but not on any
scale that would reverse Biden’s victory. He speculated that, though Trump may
never concede, he will voluntarily leave the White House, once he has lost in
the courts.
On
Tuesday, I spoke again with the Barr associate, who argued that the Attorney
General was still defying the President’s will. The associate highlighted the
parts of the memo that urged prosecutors to not launch investigations into
“fanciful” or “far-fetched claims.” A former senior national-security official
was less charitable, telling me on Tuesday that Barr had issued the memo to
appease Trump. “I’m assuming he was under pressure from the White House to do
something, and he wants to remain,” the official said. “I think he’s just doing
the minimum to comply with Trump, but not actually doing anything. I think it’s
theatre more than reality.”
Trump
and Barr’s actions are politically dangerous. A new Politico/Morning Consult
survey finds that seventy per cent of Republicans do
not think the 2020 election was “free and fair.” False voter-fraud claims
are gaining enormous audiences on
Facebook, energizing and enraging the President’s supporters. And Barr, along
with other Republican officials, is enabling it. By any measure, he is
abdicating his responsibility, as the country’s chief law-enforcement officer,
to uphold the rule of law, and violating his oath to protect and defend the
Constitution. Following McConnell’s lead, he is recklessly dumping the problem
on the judicial branch. At best, Barr is humoring the President, playing for
time, and expects state and federal judges to stand up to Trump and dismiss his
false claims. Odds are that the judges, particularly those with lifetime
appointments, will do so. Still, there is no excuse for allowing a sitting
President to flirt with authoritarianism.
Since
Barr took office, I’ve hoped that he would prove his critics, including me,
wrong. He can still do so. No other Administration official has the power to
discredit the President’s false legal claims. Barr will deserve praise if he
proves to be the November surprise that Trump does not want—and the one that
American democracy needs.