The most litigiously vindictive occupant of the White House, ever, demands loyalty above all.
Which is why he fired James Comey over the Russia investigation.
Which he why he fired his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, because Sessions refused to unrecuse himself over the Russia investigation.
That, after Sessions was the first Senator to endorse Donald Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign.
It’s become very clear that Trump does not consider the Department of Justice to be independent of political considerations, and many pundits have long since concluded that Trump considers William Barr to be his personal attorney, rather than an independent Attorney General.
As Donald Trump sees the world, our nation — and, indeed, the world in general — must be subservient to him. After all, he once said at one of his megarallies that he’s The Chosen One.
We saw in yesterday’s Times that Barr went all the way to Italy to talk to investigators there in a vain hope to cast doubt on the validity of the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s interference in our 2016 election (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/politics/john-durham-criminal-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).
The Times reported that Italy’s Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, specifically refuted the idea that Italy’s intelligence services played any role in the events leading to the Russia investigation. All this was independently confirmed by our chief international correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, who was in the room when the Italian investigators told Barr that he had wasted his time by going to Rome.
Barr is overseeing the investigation of his own Justice Department which is beng led by the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, John H. Durham, a Republican like himself.
Yes, the Justice Department is investigating itself, because Trump is totally obsessed with discrediting the entire Russia investigation, as he faces certain impeachment.
So we asked our chief investigative reporter, associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman, to speak directly with Durham, to find out what Durham has in mind.
Durham is well known among prosecutors for his successful prosecutions of official corruption.
Before ASR Sherman even had a chance to sit down in Durham’s office, he said, “Susanna, I’m really glad that you are here, because I’m totally sick and tired of all this hypocrisy going on in William Barr’s Justice Department.”
“Now that Barr has given me subpoena authority, I have subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury, and the grand jury will sit, not in the federal courthouse, but in the discomfort of his own office.”
“And I am sure that the grand jury will indict Barr for violating his oath of office for his brazen attempt to overturn all the evidence which shows, without doubt, that Putin interfered in the 2016 election so Trump would be elected."
A spokeswoman for Barr told associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones that Trump has given orders for federal marshals to arrest Durham and send him to an undisclosed location in Russia for deep interrogation.