On Tuesday, “Attorney General William Barr defended the aggressive federal law enforcement response to civil unrest in America as he testified for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee.” AP News
Watch Barr’s testimony here. C-SPAN
The right praises Barr’s defense of law enforcement and criticizes House Democrats.
“Rioters, said Barr, have tried to burn down the courthouse, attacked federal officers, and pelted them with ‘rocks, frozen water bottles, cans of food, and balloons filled with fecal matter.’… The injuries to federal officers trying to protect federal property include severe burns, beatings, and three officers who may be permanently blinded after being hit with lasers… As Barr very pointedly said, ‘peaceful protesters do not throw explosives into federal courthouses, tear down plywood with crowbars, or launch fecal matter at federal officers.’…
“Barr promised that the Justice Department would ‘continue working’ to ‘ensure the rule of law, so that people can live their lives safely and without fear.’ As members of the public (and former Justice Department lawyers), that is exactly what we expect and hope for from an attorney general, particularly when local officials are failing to enforce the law and protect the safety of the public and our communities.”
Hans A. von Spakovsky and Charles “Cully” Stimson, Fox News
“The assaults on the federal courthouse and adjacent state Justice Center started no later than ‘Riot Night,’ May 29… the most radical elements began nightly assaults on the two buildings, smashing windows and hurling rocks and bottles.The weekend of July 4 (and ever since), they added in commercial-grade fireworks, setting alight the plywood that had covered the windows for weeks. And those were far from the first, or only, attempts at arson… It’s a sad state of affairs when the chairman of the Judiciary Committee doesn’t give a damn about the truth.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
“This should have been an important oversight hearing featuring an important witness — one whom a serious committee would have [wanted] both to hear out and to challenge. It is, after all, the nature of the Justice Department’s work that there are many tough judgment calls; no one gets them all right…
“But of course, it wasn’t anything like an actual hearing, and they didn’t want him to testify — as in actually answer questions. The session was a coveted election-year opportunity for Democrats to berate the attorney general of the United States in five-minute installments, accusing Barr of corruption, perjury, violating his oath, betraying the Constitution — at one point, even of killing thousands of COVID-19 victims (apparently, by being attorney general during a pandemic).”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
“The Barr hearing wasn’t very edifying, in large part because Democrats were utterly committed to keeping him from saying anything. One of them would make a [sermonette], pause to ask Barr a hostile question, and then angrily interrupt him when he started to answer, accusing him of taking up valuable time. Then, the sermonette would start up again…
“In general, Barr is an excellent witness. He’s sober, usually doesn’t let his irritation show (although he will spin his pen faster), never says more than he has to, and knows more than anyone else in the room. It’s a tribute to how good he is that Democrats were desperate never to get caught up in a genuine back-and-forth with him.”
Rich Lowry, National Review
“Mr. Barr did make some news when he confirmed amid the din that he has tasked a prosecutor to investigate the Obama-era ‘unmasking’ of Trump campaign officials. Recall that Obama officials used their authority to unmask the names of Americans caught by U.S. intelligence legally conversing with foreign officials. The names are supposed to be redacted for privacy reasons, but 39 separate officials unmasked and read the private conversations of Michael Flynn in 2016 and 2017…
“The unmaskings themselves may have been legal, but the classified information in the transcripts was later leaked to the press to damage the Trump Administration. Mr. Barr said Mr. Bash is looking at the ‘high number of unmaskings’ at the time, including ‘some that do not readily appear in the line of normal business.’ This is good news and continues Mr. Barr’s examination of the FBI and Justice Department intervention in the 2016 election.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
The left criticizes Barr for defending the actions of law enforcement officers and touting unsubstantiated claims about the election.
The left criticizes Barr for defending the actions of law enforcement officers and touting unsubstantiated claims about the election.
“The most effective portions of the day… came when Black members of the Democratic caucus questioned Barr about excessive use of police force… [Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)] noted that Black people in this country are disproportionately subjected to police use of force and are searched a vastly disproportionate amount throughout the country. Barr then refused to explain why his department had stopped investigating patterns and practices of discrimination in specific police departments, including the Minneapolis Police Department, whose officers killed George Floyd.”
Jeremy Stahl, Slate
“[Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)] raised the case of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black massage therapist who died last year after police in Aurora, Colorado, locked him into a since-banned chokehold and injected him with a sedative. Bass contrasted McClain’s treatment with that of a mass murderer who killed a dozen people in Aurora. ‘Consider James Holmes, who murdered 12 people and injured 70 others in a movie theater,” Bass said. ‘James wore body armor, had a knife, semi-automatic weapons and an AR-15. Yet he was calmly arrested by the same police department as Elijah McLean without a chokehold or injection of ketamine.’”
Amanda Terkel and Ryan J. Reilly, Huffington Post
Regarding law enforcement’s response to the protests, “Barr said peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square hit with chemical agents, stun grenades and rubber bullets had been ‘unruly.’ Pressed about the many times force has been used against nonviolent demonstrators, he declared that ‘protesters’ — he made quotation marks with his fingers — ‘are not following police directions.’… [He then] defended armed, right-wing protesters who invaded the Michigan Capitol and called [online] for killing the governor…
“[He’s using] federal police powers to deny peaceful Americans their constitutional rights while fomenting violence among hoodlums — all to revive Trump’s reelection bid.”
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
“The question is not whether individual acts of violence against federal property and/or agents are illegal and should be punished; they are and they should. Rather, the question is whether law enforcement officers from the Department of Homeland Security have overstepped their boundaries by cracking down on protesters on terrain removed from federal property, and by doing so in defiance of local officials’ demands that they refrain… that conduct is particularly galling given Trump’s directive that states are largely on their own against the coronavirus.”
Greg Sargent, Washington Post
Regarding election interference, “Barr has said multiple times that he’s worried about foreign actors manipulating voting by mail at a large scale in November. He repeated that Tuesday. But Barr has no evidence to back up that concern, and election officials say what he’s warning about is unlikely. Here’s the deal: Among the five states that vote by mail statewide and the thousands of absentee ballots cast every year, there is no evidence that voting by mail leads to substantial voter fraud…
“A number of states have practices to confirm absentee ballots, making them difficult-to-impossible to duplicate on a massive scale. To do so, bad actors would have to know a person’s personal signature and correct address. They would have to mail ballots in the same envelopes that the state is using in a way that doesn’t attract election officials’ attention by duplicating ballots among those who have voted. All of this from a foreign country.”
Amber Phillips, Washington Post
“When Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York asked the attorney general what he’d do if Trump lost the election in November but refused to leave office in January, Barr replied: ‘If the results are clear, I would leave office.’ It was a vague and evasive answer, but there was little follow-up… After five hours of testimony, it was hard to say whether lawmakers had much new insight into the workings of the Justice Department or the actions of its leadership—ostensibly the purpose of an oversight hearing.”
Russell Berman, The Atlantic