The same day that Attorney General William Barr insisted that “there is no pattern” to him working to advance the personal interests of President Donald Trump, multiple sources cited by The New York Times He said one of his first moves after taking office in early 2019 was to try to find ways to undermine the conviction of former Trump repairman Michael Cohen.
Barr has reportedly repeatedly questioned prosecutors about the charges against Cohen, who pleaded guilty in August 2018 to financial crimes including secret money payments to women who allegedly had relationships with Trump. She even instructed Justice Department officials to write a legal memorandum that cast doubt on the legitimacy of Cohen’s conviction, according to sources cited by the. Times, but they refused to do so.
Meanwhile, in an NPR interview published Thursday, Barr scoffed at the idea that he has been promoting Trump’s agenda at the expense of the rule of law, calling it a “media narrative” and saying “there is no such pattern.” She became defensive in the interview multiple times.
Barr has made several controversial interventions in cases involving the associates of President Donald Trump. In early May, she decided to drop the Justice Department case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, a decision that drew strong criticism, as Flynn had already pleaded guilty. Although Michael Flynn was the president’s national security adviser, Barr denied any political pressure to drop the charges against him: “I don’t know if I would refer to him as a friend of any administration,” he said.
And while Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI, Barr still called the allegations against the retired general ridiculous: “There were a lot of nuts in the Flynn case. Everyone knew it. Everyone was wondering why this case was brought up.
When asked about the chaotic removal last week of Geoffrey Berman, the former New York Southern District Attorney who participated in the investigation of many of Trump’s allies, Barr dismissed the move as nothing more than a standard staff decision. .
“I certainly knew that, given the current environment, every time you make a staff move, conspiracy theorists will suggest that there is something, there is some hidden motive involved. But I felt this was a really good time to do it because I wasn’t aware of anything that should actually lead to that, ”he said. He said Berman was “living off borrowed time from the start.”
Despite insisting that he treats all cases equally, he apparently could not name a single case unrelated to the president’s inner circle where he had staged a last-minute intervention similar to that of the Flynn case.
When pressured into the president’s executive branch, Barr echoed the commander-in-chief’s rhetoric and attempted to redirect the conversation. He rebuked the press for failing to examine the state governors, who, in order to combat the new coronavirus, have been “putting the entire population under house arrest and telling people that they have to shut down their livelihoods and businesses,” said. The President has often said that the measures taken against the coronavirus are worse than the disease itself. Barr reiterated another point of discussion by Trump when he said that an election with a high number of mail ballots can take place safely. He said the evidence was “obvious”.
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