Democrats Are Wrong to Rule Out Barr’s Impeachment

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It’s understandable that, after four years of Donald Trump’s voluminous corruption, fatigue has settled across the land. It’s less understandable that the Army of the Exhausted includes the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

On Sunday, Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler was asked about the latest effort by Attorney General William Barr to fix a problem for the president. Over the weekend, Barr had clumsily fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman’s office had investigated Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who had admitted to felonies including a campaign-finance violation that federal prosecutors said was committed at the direction of “Individual-1” — that is, Trump.

So Berman, a Republican who contributed to Trump’s 2016 campaign, has already officially logged one Trump felony. In addition, Berman’s office has been investigating Trump’s other personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, as well as Trump’s bank, Deutsche Bank, and Trump’s inaugural committee.

Nadler acknowledged the obvious. On top of Barr’s gross distortion of the Mueller report and other dodgy efforts, Nadler cited a “pattern” of Barr “corruptly impeding” investigations, as Barr did in the cases of Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and Trump friend and self-avowed political dirty trickster Roger Stone. Barr’s attack on Berman — Barr at first falsely claimed Berman had resigned — is “just more of the same,” Nadler said.

It sounds pretty bad. Yet given Senate Republicans’ refusal to address corruption, Nadler said, calls for impeaching the attorney general are “a waste of time.”

Nadler is hardly alone in believing the nation’s chief law enforcement officer is corrupt. Berman’s predecessor, Preet Bharara, a Democrat, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Paul Rosenzweig, a Republican, are just a few of those who concur.

Nadler has not abandoned oversight of the Justice Department altogether. His committee has scheduled a hearing this week on the politicization of the department under Barr. But foreclosing the possibility of impeachment, regardless of the Senate’s corruption, looks like another instance of enabling an authoritarian encroachment of the federal government.

There are at least four reasons to rethink this.

First, Barr’s conduct, which includes his aggressive clearing of protesters exercising First Amendment rights of speech and assembly in Washington’s Lafayette Square, to enable a presidential photo op, clearly invites impeachment. Yet Barr has received little scrutiny in Congress because Republicans won’t allow it in the Senate, and Barr, in another authoritarian move, has refused to accept House oversight.

Investigations and hearings produce witnesses and information. Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine was “widely understood” at the top levels of government, according to former national security adviser John Bolton. Yet without a flurry of House subpoenas in the impeachment investigation, the public might never have known the details and ramifications. To get information, it helps to have a structured, legally sanctioned means of obtaining it.

Second, Barr has shown he wants his lawless cake and respectability, too. The attorney general probably doesn’t realize how fully he has already lost this battle. But his outrages are often accompanied by leaks about his misgivings. For example, the New York Times reported that Barr’s service as a prop at Trump’s now infamous Bible photo op made Barr “uncomfortable, according to two people told of those conversations.”

An aggressive House investigation, punctuated by public hearings, can be useful in keeping Barr on the defensive and keeping his authoritarian urges in check. This will be more important as the election nears and Barr faces potential decisions about voter suppression, foreign election sabotage and other tactics designed to aid Trump’s campaign.

Third, given the level of corruption already visible, there may well be a need to pursue criminal cases against Trump enablers after the election, provided Trump is removed from office. It would be better to lay out evidence for such cases before the election. To pursue them afterward, without having previously established an evidence trail, may look to some voters as dangerous opportunism.

Finally, sometimes you have to do the right thing and let the chips fall. For political reasons, Democrats have resisted an aggressive pursuit of justice. Current polls suggest they navigated the politics correctly. Swing voters likely won’t pay much attention to corruption, and aren’t eager for the out-party to dwell on it. Trump is losing support as a result of his failure to deal with coronavirus and its economic fallout. A sizable majority of voters grasps that he is dishonest. Why mess with a trend line that currently points toward Democratic victory in November?

Because if you support the rule of law, you have to act like you support the rule of law and be seen supporting the rule of law. That means coming to its defense when it’s under attack — as it is.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.

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