DOJ Sent Bill Barr’s Anti-Mueller Talking Points to Fox News Before Barr Was Confirmed as Attorney General

Attorney General Bill Barr is believed by many to owe his current position to a long and unsolicited memo sent to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) criticizing the work of then-special counsel Robert Mueller. Now, a newly released email shows that DOJ personnel communicated with Fox News Channel to promote the Barr memo’s findings in late 2018.

Widely criticized as various versions of “bizarre,” the 20-page Barr memo was dated June 8, 2018 and sent to then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. The memo’s existence became public knowledge less than two weeks after Barr was formally nominated to replace then-outgoing attorney general Jeff Sessions.

President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Barr six months after the memo, on December 7, 2018. Trump made his formal nomination of Barr on January 3, 2019. The senate confirmed Barr on February 14, 2019.

The memo broadly questions the scope of Mueller’s dual-pronged inquiry into obstruction of justice and Russian-sourced electoral interference and argues that Mueller had no business questioning President Donald Trump about alleged obstruction of justice due to the firing of former FBI director James Comey.

The Barr memo was reported by the Wall Street Journal on the night of December 19, 2018.  Almost instantaneously, Fox News received talking points via a two-page email which highlighted the memo’s assessments. The points came from DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs Director Kerri Kupec.

Obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by journalist and FOIA maven Jason Leopold, the newly-released email dated December 19, 2018 and bearing a time stamp of 9:06 p.m. is addressed to Fox News @ Night host Shannon Bream. All of the boldface type that appears in the following quoted lines appears as boldface type in the original Kupec-Bream document.

The document begins with a “Background” section that leans heavily into criticism of the Mueller investigation while insisting that “Barr’s memo was unsolicited.” The second section is fashioned as a “Memo.” An “Other Points” section assures the reader that Barr did not act unethically by sending the memo and that any decisions Barr makes “about specific matters” would also be considered ethical.

“Barr’s memo was written during a time when there was widespread, public speculation that Special Counsel Mueller would seek to compel President Trump to submit to an interview so that Mueller could evaluate his state of mind when he fired James Comey,” the first section notes. “The supposed legal theory was that Trump may have obstructed justice if he exercised his constitutional prerogative to fire Comey for ‘corrupt’ reasons. Barr was understandably concerned about how this theory would affect the functions of the Department of Justice.”

“Barr’s memo is akin to a law review article,” the second section begins, “It meticulously dissects and analyzes a specific subsection of one federal obstruction statute, explaining why it does not support what Barr speculated to be an obstruction theory of Mueller’s and explains why such a theory, if pursued, would damage the Department.”

From the Kupec-Bream email, at length:

Barr distinguished two categories of presidential conduct that might be termed “obstruction of justice”:

1. The act of sabotaging a proceeding’s truth-finding function–for example when a person destroys or alters evidence. These actions are inherently subversive and wrong and are therefore committed with a culpable state of mind. Barr observed that a President may fairly be accused of this kind of obstruction as Nixon and Clinton were, and that investigating this form of wrongdoing does not invade the President’s discretion to perform his constitutional duties.

2. Undertaking a facially lawful action — such as making a personnel decision — in a manner that is thought to have been “corrupt” as a matter of federal statutory criminal law. These are actions that are permissible on their face but would theoretically constitute obstruction because, for example, they were performed with a subjectively bad state of mind or improper motive.

“Were the Department to adopt the second category as obstruction, Barr argued, it would have disastrous implications for the Presidency, the Department of Justice, and the Executive Branch as a whole,” the talking points email continues.

Barr argued that the implications of this theory of obstruction are dire for the Department of Justice. Everyday decisions to conclude or constrain an investigation by DOJ lawyers would be open to inquiry as potential criminal obstruction. Failure to open such inquiries may itself be regarded as corrupt. The result would be the further “criminalization” of standard political disputes between the political parties and branches of government.

Law&Crime reached out to DOJ for comment on this article but no response was forthcoming at the time of publication.

Read the full email below:

Kupec-Bream Talking Points … by Law&Crime on Scribd

[image via Ed Zurga/Getty Images]

Quiet and Loud #elderlyissues #atozchallenge — penned in moon dust

Its an odd pace elderly and sound Some need quiet others quite loud With aging comes the issue of hearing loss. It is not the case with every person, however. I also notice that hard of hearing people can hear things when they really want to hear what you are saying. “I know you are […]

via Quiet and Loud #elderlyissues #atozchallenge — penned in moon dust

Inoreader – ‘No way food safety not compromised’: US regulation rollbacks during Covid-19 criticised

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Source: Inoreader – ‘No way food safety not compromised’: US regulation rollbacks during Covid-19 criticised

Minimum-Wage Workers Are Dying to Keep Everyone Else Alive. They Deserve More.

Rcooley123's Blog

Outstanding essay by William Rivers Pitt. This definitely cannot be over-emphasized. Millions of people often taken for granted by our society while performing jobs that keep us going for little pay and often even less recognition for the risks they take on a daily basis. They definitely deserve better treatment from all of us – including better pay, better working conditions and recognition of their value as human beings and people working to improve the lives of us all while supporting their own loved ones. -rjc

Low-wage workers are standing between our society and calamity. They deserve health care and a living wage now.

Source: Minimum-Wage Workers Are Dying to Keep Everyone Else Alive. They Deserve More.

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‘Delusional,’ ‘Absolutely false’: Governors cry foul on Trump testing claims

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Source: ‘Delusional,’ ‘Absolutely false’: Governors cry foul on Trump testing claims

Impossible for UK to meet Covid-19 testing targets, scientists say | Politics | The Guardian

The World Health Organization has repeatedly urged governments to pursue testing and tracing, and some countries, including Singapore and South Korea, have successfully used this approach to contain their outbreaks, while Germany has also continued to carry out contact tracing. The UK abandoned population testing and contact tracing in early March, when case numbers began to rise steeply, but the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Friday that contact tracing would be reintroduced, including through a proposed NHS smartphone app. Experts say the ability to rely on this approach to safely exit the lockdown will depend critically on widespread population testing beyond the level needed for diagnosing patients in hospital.

Source: Impossible for UK to meet Covid-19 testing targets, scientists say | Politics | The Guardian