Note
From Elie: Bill Barr’s Cringeworthy Text Messages
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By Elie Honig
Dear Listener,
Regular readers of this column will know: I’m not the biggest
fan of Bill Barr. I’ve had some harsh words for him in this space —
“sycophant,” “liar,” “pretender,” and other colorful but well-deserved
descriptors. Oh, and I also wrote a book about him titled Hatchet
Man. Why mince words?
In that book, I examine Barr’s tenure as attorney general under
Donald Trump from early 2019 to late 2020. As the book’s title suggests, I
argue that Barr was a wickedly dishonest and thoroughly corrupt operator.
Now we’ve gotten a glimpse into new materials that are uniquely
revealing about Barr’s stint as attorney general: his texts. The Justice Department
released a batch of his texts last week in response to a Freedom of Information
Act and, boy oh boy, are they cringeworthy. The texts give us a firsthand
glimpse at an attorney general who eagerly exploited DOJ to serve Trump’s
electoral prospects, who wouldn’t make a key decision without first running it
by the White House, and who was vain and insecure about his public perception.
I skewer Barr in my book, no holds barred. After reading his own words in the
texts, I feel even more justified.
I have a bit of sympathy for Barr here. (Just a bit.) It’s got
to feel invasive to have the texts from your phone suddenly available to the
world over the internet. (If my texts ever became public, readers would quickly
tire of my kids and I going back and forth on what time they need to be picked
up from soccer.) On the other hand, the guy created written records about
official business while serving as attorney general. He should have been smart
enough to know that his texts were public records, hence potentially
disclosable. (Some of Barr’s texts are even mildly humanizing. Twice, he pleads
guilty to “butt dialing” others; another time, he apparently tried to respond
to an update with the word “good” but mis-typed it and got auto-corrected to
“zoo.” Hey, we’ve all been there.)
Relatable typos aside, the texts are downright pathetic and
embarrassing, for Barr and for the Justice Department that he once led. They
expose Barr’s mindset towards the AG job: his insecurity, his pettiness, his
eagerness not just to please Trump but to use the Justice Department as an
extension of the Trump 2020 political campaign.
Indeed, despite his efforts to cultivate an image as an
old-fashioned public servant who didn’t give a whit about what people said
about him, Barr in fact closely monitored his media exposure — and the extent
to which his actions pleased the Trump campaign. For example, in one exchange in
late May 2020, DOJ Press Secretary Kerri Kupec triumphantly informed Barr that
his press statement about public protests against police violence had been
retweeted by “Don Jr., Brad Parscale,” and “Kayleigh” — referring to the
then-President’s son, campaign manager, and press secretary,
respectively.
Kupec also explained that she had been working with reporters to
explain how Barr’s statement “squares with the POTUS tweet.” Barr responded,
“Hoping for more retweets.” Yes, folks: the Attorney General of the United
States made a public statement on a vital issue, eagerly watched to see whether
Trump’s political minions approved of it, and then held his breath hoping for
even more retweets by MAGA royalty. That’s just embarrassing. And keep this
telling exchange in mind for all the times Barr has protested (and surely will
continue to insist) that he never took politics into consideration as AG.
These texts are consistent with revelations in two outstanding
new books about the Trump administration, Frankly, We Did Win This
Election by Michael Bender and I Alone Can Fix It by
Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Both books detail how, on occasion, Barr spoke
with Trump specifically to give him political advice about how best to campaign
and appeal to voters, drawing on the lessons of prior Republican presidents.
It’s a mid-level revelation in both books, given the scope of other Trump
scandals, but it jumped off the page to me. Barr, as attorney general, served
as a political and electoral consultant to the President. Again: so much for
Barr’s political impartiality.
It gets worse. At one point last summer, as the Trump
administration strained to make political hay out of ongoing nationwide
protests and to frighten the American public about the threat of Antifa, Barr
played right along. He issued a public statement declaring, “In many
places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by
anarchistic and far left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics…” (Barr’s
Justice Department would indict not a single alleged member of Antifa in
protest-related violence, though it would eventually charge several members of
right-wing extremist groups.)
At one point, as Trump and Barr carried out this performative
two-man public waltz of nonsense, Trump formally declared (by tweet) that
“[t]the United States of America will be designating Antifa as a Terrorist
Organization” — a “designation” with zero legal backing or significance. Here’s
where the texts are so revealing. Publicly, Barr played right along: he proclaimed in lockstep with
Trump that that “violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other
similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be
treated accordingly.” Yet, behind the scenes, Barr acknowledged that it was all
bullshit: “There is no such thing as ‘designating’ a domestic group,” he noted
to Kupec, correctly.
Barr’s texts with White House Counsel Pat Cipillone are
particularly bizarre and inappropriate. Barr texted Cipillone seven times from
May 2019 to June 2020. Each of Barr’s texts is one line long, and five of the
seven are identical: “Can I call you later?” Cipillone never responded in
writing to any of the texts. At a minimum, this shows the AG and White House
counsel coordinating in some way that they did not feel comfortable reducing to
writing.
Worse though, on January 30, 2020, Barr texted to Cipillone
simply, “You are a STAR.” (All-caps Barr’s.)
What was going on that day? The (first) impeachment trial of
Donald J. Trump. In fact, that very day, it became clear that enough Republican
Senators would vote against calling witnesses to effectively end the trial and
ensure Trump’s acquittal. Barr — who should have had no role or stake
whatsoever in the impeachment, and who conspicuously refused even to open an
investigation into the Ukraine scandal — was downright ebullient. A few days
later, Barr would attend Trump’s bizarre post-acquittal rally in the White
House. Again: I can rail all day long about Barr being a political hack, but
nothing speaks as loudly as Barr’s own words and actions.
None of this is the worst of Barr. No text message could measure
up to his lying to the American public repeatedly, twisting facts and law to
save Trump from the Mueller investigation, interfering in criminal cases to
help Trump’s lackeys, or spreading Trump’s lie about the risk of election
fraud. But they flesh out and confirm the worst of Barr’s instincts and
abuses.
We’ve long known that Barr abused his position as attorney
general for crassly political purposes. Now his own texts confirm it.
Stay Informed,
Elie