THE U.S. CONSTITUTION mandates that there are three co-equal branches of government — the executive, legislature and the judiciary — all tasked to provide checks and balance on each other to make sure that not one person, nor institution will abuse its power and put democracy at risk.
It is the same spirit of the law that has kept the norms and practices that since Watergate have emerged within the Executive branch with Richard Nixon abusing the power and public trust vested in his position as president.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which operates under the DOJ, is supposed to be the top law enforcement agency of the government tasked to uphold the law and enforce justice for ALL Americans, and not just to a privileged powerful few, including the President of the United States of America.
This spirit of the law is especially true if the person being investigated for alleged abuse of power, corrupt intent in defiance of the rule of law is the president of the United States, who has sworn to protect and defend the Constitution and the laws of the nation.
This is the same spirit of the law that guides the Senate in requiring judicial independence from appointees of the president for Supreme Court Justice and other justices in the judiciary.
It is also the same spirit of the law that requires from presidential appointees — especially the attorney general who heads the DOJ and the FBI director — independence from the president and from other political and personal interests in making decisions to uphold and execute the laws of the United States.
President Donald Trump’s appointee to head the DOJ — Attorney General (AG) William Barr — has just proven through his words, decisions and actions, that he is serving and protecting the man who appointed him to power and not the American people.
This negates what he said during his confirmation hearing before the Senate last January that serving in his post as AG “was not the same” as representing and protecting President Trump, and even pledged to make law enforcement decisions based only on facts and the law.
Why did Trump appoint Barr to be AG? Because this is what he expects from his nominees — loyalty to him more than anything else. This was why the president was so mad at former AG Jess Sessions when he recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation out of delicadeza.
Trump even asked Sessions to reverse his recusal. Trump also said had he known that Sessions would recuse himself, he should have not appointed him as AG.
This turn of events lead to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein overseeing the Russia probe, who then appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to head the probe in the alleged conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and Russia when Trump fired FBI James Comey with Russia in his mind, and because Comey would not give him the loyalty he was demanding from him.
Trump then appointed Matt Whitaker to be acting AG, bypassing seniority ranks within the DOJ, all because of Whittaker’s public statements that a sitting president should not be indicted. Whittaker became a ‘good soldier’ for Trump and reported to him all he knew about the Russia probe.
Then came Bill Barr, whom Trump appointed because of his public statements that the President could and should not be indicted for Obstruction of Justice. Trump was very happy about Barr and even said publicly that if he appointed Barr from the beginning, he would have not had to deal with the Russia “witch hunt.”
Now Barr is really living up to Trump’s expectations and has been parroting Trump’s narrative in defending the man who appointed him instead of the rule of law and the Constitution, especially when he “exonerated” Trump in his summary of the much anticipated Mueller report.
Barr conveniently edited out in his summary the reason why Mueller could not charge Mueller of obstruction of justice was because of a longstanding DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting president.
Mueller, instead, discussed in detail 10 ways by which Trump may have obstructed justice for Congress to investigate further on within their mandate, and memorializing his findings so that Trump may be indicted when he leaves the highest office.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask the people who did the investigation and made the report. Ask the people knowledgable of prosecution. Ask the people who take Barr’s advice as AG.
DIDN’T Special Counsel Robert Mueller write a letter to Barr in late March complaining that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the Mueller investigation and his 448-page very detailed report with accompanying evidence?
As the Washington Post reported, “at the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said that Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence [which turned during his testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that Barr did NOT even review the evidence] and found it insufficient to support such a charge.”
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote in his letter.
“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
DIDN’T more than 450 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump — if not for the office he held as President of the United States?
According to the Post, the statement — signed by myriad former career government employees as well as high-profile political appointees — offers a rebuttal to Attorney General William P. Barr’s determination that the evidence Mueller uncovered was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime.
DIDN’T Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tell House Democrats he will not turn over Trump’s tax returns despite their legal request, because AG Barr told him not to?
What about Trump’s objection to Mueller testifying before Congress? Or Trump’s objection to former White Counsel Dan McGahn who testified before Mueller that Trump asked him to fire Mueller and to lie testifying before? Or Trump’s brazen move to order his staff and officials to ignore Congress’ subpoenas? Barr sure knows this is against the principle of checks and balances mandated by the Constitution.
WILLIAM BARR NEEDS TO RESIGN. And the American people need to vote out of office Trump’s enablers in Congress. And must I add, the president himself has to go?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos.
