If you are attorney general, having just had 2000 former DOJ attorneys sign a petition calling for your resignation is bad, and it is absolutely unprecedented in American history. With Barr, it is also earned. But Barr seems to be the type to revel in disgusting the “mainstream” types of attorneys. He is down to be Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Trump’s “Roy Cohn.”

But having to hear your former boss castigate you as the antithesis of the “law and order” man you are supposed to be, must hurt. Barr is hurting tonight. He’s a man under siege.

Good.

Donald Ayer, was the former deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. In that position, Ayer supervised Barr when he led the department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 1989 and 1990. Ayer left the deputy attorney general position in 1990, Barr replaced him and then became attorney general.

Donald Ayer knows Bill Barr awfully well, and that makes his assessment and overall judgment that much more damning. Look out, Bill, this is going out across the country, in the Atlantic, Ayer take his best shot:

“In chilling terms, Barr’s own words make clear his long-held belief in the need for a virtually autocratic executive who is not constrained by countervailing powers within our government under the constitutional system of checks and balances,”

We pause to note that Barr and his ilk only believe in that unitary executive when a Republican is in office. When it is a Democrat, they fight to the bloody end to take all power away, indeed deny the Democrat the ability to nominate a Supreme Court justice.

Of course, Republicans have found ways to get into the Oval Office even without winning the actual “vote” lately, and are quite good at taking full advantage of the electoral college and the courts. Perhaps they plan on being in the White House for most of the near future.

We move on:

Indeed, given our national faith and trust in a rule of law no one can subvert, it is not too strong to say that Bill Barr is un-American. And now, from his perch as attorney general, he is in the midst of a root-and-branch attack on the core principles that have guided our justice system, and especially our Department of Justice, since the 1970s.”

It would be extremely difficult to be more contemptuous of Barr, nor more damning in criticism. To a lawyer, especially a public lawyer, to say that one has moved beyond the rule of law is perhaps the worst possible accusation. And yet it is true.

Ayer finished it off with a hammer:

The benefit of the doubt that many were ready to extend to Barr a year ago—as among the best of a bad lot of nominees who had previously served in high office without disgrace—has now run out. He has told us in great detail who he is, what he believes, and where he would like to take us. For whatever twisted reasons, he believes that the president should be above the law, and he has as his foil in pursuit of that goal a president who, uniquely in our history, actually aspires to that status. And Barr has acted repeatedly on those beliefs in ways that are more damaging at every turn. Presently he is moving forward with active misuse of the criminal sanction, as one more tool of the president’s personal interests.

Pay very close attention to that last clause. The A.G.’s power is immense, in that he is the only one in our structure who can determine whether to investigate and prosecute a person (or people working under him), and we can expect – from Barr’s previous interventions – political investigations and real witch hunts against Democrats running in 2020.

Obviously, Donald Trump represents the biggest threat to American democracy since 1860. But Donald Trump wouldn’t be Donald Trump without Bill Barr. Let your mind wander back to the early Trump days, and the loathsome character Jeff Sessions was Attorney General. As bad as Jeff Sessions was – and he was – Sessions also immediately recognized that he had a conflict in the investigation into Trump and took himself out of the investigation, infuriating Trump, even though everyone looking on couldn’t conceive of an attorney general acting any other way.

Now we have one who will “act another way.”

Donald Trump cannot be Donald Trump without Bill Barr. For that reason we are seeing pressure like never seen before coming down upon Barr, to ruin his credibility, all in an attempt to force him to abide by his constitutional role or some constitutional norms. At the very least, some of the pressure may be intended to put Barr on notice that he is on the hook for his actions, and there is no guarantee that Trump will win in 2020.

If Barr is a private citizen come January 2021, he may come to seriously regret some of his more brazen acts. I suspect Ayer’s purpose in writing included putting Barr “on notice,” as well as putting the rest of us on notice as to all that Barr’s capable.

There is a war heating up for control of the United States. We’re just beginning, and this letter is just one small volley in the opening shots.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom