Attorney General Barr Makes Press Rounds, but John Durham Will Have the Last Word

Dec. 10, 2019 (EIRNS)—Attorney General Barr was interviewed by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal today, as reactions began to roll in concerning the Horowitz report. Prof. Jonathan Turley has an excellent article in The Hill observing that the Horowitz findings are damning for the FBI.

Turley maintains that saying the FBI investigation of Trump’s campaign was not improper to begin with, when taken with the actual abuses revealed in the report, is equivalent to congratulating the captain of the Titanic at the beginning of his disastrous voyage. Larry Johnson also has an article in “Sic Semper Tyrannis” based on the Executive Summary to the Horowitz Report. Johnson headlines his colorful portrait “Horowitz’s Futile Attempt To Polish the FBI Turd.”

Barr told NBC News: “I think, probably, from a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government used the apparatus of the state—principally, the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies—both to spy on political opponents. But as to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election,” Barr alleged. “As far as I’m aware, this is the first time in history that this has been done to a Presidential campaign.”

He repeated that the Trump campaign was spied upon and those efforts, by informants, only turned up exculpatory information concerning any link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Nonetheless, the FBI proceeded with the most intrusive technique of all, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, and hid all the exculpatory information they had gathered from the FISA Court. They relied, instead, on the dossier compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, which was being paid for by the Clinton campaign and which Barr characterized as a “complete sham.”

“When their entire case collapsed, what did they do?” Barr asked. “They kept on investigating the President, well into his administration.”

“I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press. I think there were gross abuses ... and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.” Barr stated that the final word on this would come from U.S. Attorney John Durham, whose much wider investigative purview would allow him to assemble the full picture of what happened in 2016, including actions by foreign intelligence agencies, the CIA, and the State Department.