Hillary Clinton warned that William Barr’s attitude on executive power puts the country down the road to tyranny.
Maddow said, “In terms of Barr’s argument about that today, he went I believe even further than he went in his 19-page memo when he suggested under questioning from Senator Leahy that the president could without obstructing justice, by virtue of the fact he is president fire any prosecutor who was investigating him if the president believed himself to be innocent of the accusations that the prosecutor was investigating. Now that is not just the president can obstruct justice that is the president can’t be investigated if the president doesn’t want to be investigated.”
Clinton added, “And that is the road to tyranny. That is what authoritarians believe and those who service them argue. And as a young lawyer on the Watergate investigation back in 1974, that would have been unthinkable for either a Democrat or a Republican to argue that. And the Saturday Night Massacre occurred because the attorney general and other high-ranking officials in the Justice Department would not do what President Nixon wanted them to do, which was basically stop investigating me. So when you hear something like that, and I know Pat Leahy well, he is a former prosecutor, obviously now very veteran Senator. When I looked at his face as he was asking that question, you could just see the incredulity. Like where does this end?”
Video:
Hillary Clinton says Barr's attitude on executive power is the road to tyranny. #Maddow pic.twitter.com/PFrq78yQbK
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 2, 2019
Trump has finally found a willing tool who will carry out his extremist vision of executive power in the Department of Justice. William Barr believes as he has written in the past that a president can’t be charged with a crime, because it is impossible for a sitting president to commit a crime. Trump is dangerous, but Barr’s views weaponize him in a war against democracy.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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