But actually, I don’t even think this means he should recuse himself. Barr’s son in law is not Trump’s private lawyer. He is a federal employee, just like Barr. Both have the same interest, to uphold the Constitution. Both may be asked advise the President, although obviously the AG has lots of additional duties.
Now, it’s true that Barr’s son-in-law could be pressured by Trump, but the same is true of Barr himself. Either could bias an investigation of the President, but that’s why we have independent special investigators in the first place.
EDIT: Imagine you work in sales, and your wife works in the same company but in accounting. You want to make the company money no matter what, but your wife wants to trim expenses. Is that a conflict of interest? I don’t think so. Ultimately you are both interested in seeing your company succeed, you two just have very different approaches.
Just read the NYT article. Barring a couple of small-ish things like lying about asking for someone’s resignation, is there any actual new info there? Like, it’s a terrifying compendium when all laid out like that, sure, but isn’t everything in there just a recap of already public information from the last couple years?
In a sane world, this would confirm that Rosenstein is in fact leaving.
Or, since we apparently live in an insane one, it could just be another crazy Trump scheme to pressure him to leave. (Next episode: Trump changes all the locks on the Justice Department doors!)
Again, though, Rosenstein leaving is pretty moot now. Oversight for the Mueller investigation now resides fully with the new AG, William Barr, and not with the Deputy AG, Rosenstein.
Imagine Obama is under dozens of investigations. He just appoints Eric Holder after a series of revelations that Obama attempted to influence DoJ. Eric Holder’s daughter in law then abruptly resigns from her high powered law practice to become Obama’s personal attorney.
It’s not that just the Republicans would blow a gasket, because of course they would. But so would the media. This is the world we live in.
Edit: This series of tweets is not directly connected to the above thought. I just found it a really striking example of Republican shamelessness.
White House counsel is not a “personal attorney”. Their job is to help the president obey the law, not to help cover up their crimes. If the president is under investigation, any relevant communication between the president and White House counsel is not even protected by attorney-client privilege.
What gets me he is so far removed from reality that he has no idea how childish and ridiculous he looks. This guy is suffering from a pretty severe personality disorder.
I hear you. He genuinely sounds like one of those kids in an online game, screaming at you because you just killed him or whatever. Except this is worse, because he’s the POTUS and he’s using dangerous language. So instead of just being a screaming kid, he’s the swatter making a phone call about the NYT.
It’s a fucking national embarrassment 365 days a year and I cannot fathom how people can be huge supporters of him. I would find it despicable, but I could at least understand if someone had a position like “Okay, the guy is a train wreck, but I just want my tax cuts or to stack the court so it’s worth it”. But the personality cult around him? What the fuck, America?
