Attorney General William Barr claimed Southern District of New York prosecutor Geoffrey Berman is resigning, but he wants to stay. SDNY is investigating multiple crimes involving Trump, including inauguration embezzlement and the Ukraine shakedown.
Throughout this presidency, there has been a wide gap between President Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and his means to carry them out. The sanguine analysis is to dismiss the threat, which indeed can seem ineffectual and even silly. Just in the last day, he threatened violence against peaceful protesters in Tulsa, and is siccing the Department of Justice in a hopeless lawsuit to stop John Bolton’s book even after it has been widely read.
And yet over the last three years, the gap has asymptotically narrowed through a process of trial and error, as Trump has discovered which officials are unwilling to undermine the rule of law and removed them. The most chillingly effective step in this process has been the tenure of William Barr. The Attorney General’s combination of panic-fueled commitment to total culture war and experience in implementing the theory of the unified executive (under Republican administrations) has perfectly suited him for the task.
Barr, the perfect bureaucratic authoritarian, has carried out Trump’s vision of law enforcement as a sword against his enemies and a shield for his allies.
