Warned by Italian authorities that Trump was involved in financial crimes, Attorney General Bill Barr and Special Counsel John Durham protected him by accusing the FBI of wrongdoing.
That’s what months of investigative journalism by the New York Times uncovered, and prominent legal experts are dumbfounded by what Barr and Durham did (read story here).
Barr, while attorney general, appointed Durham to investigate the FBI for daring to investigate Trump’s Russia connections. “Basically, Durham and Barr wanted to prove that the Trump-Russia investigation was manufactured in bad faith … with the goal of hurting Trump politically,” Vox says (read their story here).
But they couldn’t prove that, so they lied to the press and public. And when, in the course of their snipe hunt, they were tipped off by Italian authorities about Trump’s “suspicious financial dealings” (see Newsweek story here), they engaged in a cover-up.
The FBI emerges from this as a scapegoat for Trump’s crimes, and Barr and Durham as a Trumpian equivalent of Nixon’s “plumbers” — a squad of corrupt officials serving a lawless president’s nefarious political ends.
Before the 2020 election, some media pundits predicted that Trump had to win or “he’ll spend the rest of his life in court.” He didn’t win, and while so far his company — the Trump Organization — has only paid a paltry $1.2 million fine, while his longtime accountant went to jail, his legal woes have piled up. MSNBC catalogued them as follows (here):
“In addition to the Jan. 6 criminal investigation, the classified documents criminal investigation, the Georgia election interference criminal investigation, the criminal investigation into Trump’s alleged financial crimes in New York, the criminal investigation surrounding his special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and the criminal investigation into Trump’s pre-election hush-money payments to a porn star, the Republican also faced a criminal investigation from Durham’s special counsel probe.”
As a political figure with millions of supporters, Trump may never be held accountable; he may indeed be above the law. Those who did his bidding don’t enjoy similar immunity, and working for Trump has often led to ruined lives, careers, and reputations. Barr and Durham appear set to join that dubious club.