At the Washington Post’s Plum Line, Greg Sargent writes that William Barr’s deceptions are more dangerous than you think.
It’s an excellent post about Barr’s attempt to validate Trump’s lies (about Russia, Ukraine, election interference). Sargent’s assessment is even less favorable for the future – and so more ominous – than he writes.
Sargent is right that “anything that obscures that eagerness helps Trump dodge accountability for his use of his office to extort another foreign power into helping rig the next election, for which he’s being impeached.”
There’s something worse, however, in Barr’s efforts to twist clear legal conclusions: this may portend Trump’s unwillingness to accept *any* democratic election under law in which he is not the winner.
Barr’s disrespect for the law may be a harbinger of Trump’s rejection of democratic elections, and a signal that he will advance any claim whatever to set aside an unfavorable 2020 result.
If that should be so, then Barr is setting the scene for something worse than inviting or rationalizing future foreign interference – he’s laying the foundation for a wholesale rejection of a lawful democratic process Trump doesn’t like.
If solid and truthful legal arguments don’t constrain to Barr, perhaps it’s because he knows that even a constitutional electoral process won’t constrain Trump.
Sarah Kendzior’s concern in this regard looks increasingly sound.