{"id":9257,"date":"2020-02-14T23:47:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T07:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9257"},"modified":"2020-02-15T00:11:56","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T08:11:56","slug":"post1-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9257","title":{"rendered":"“How Trump\u2019s Relationship With Barr Got So Complicated”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Peter Baker<\/span> and Michael D. Shear, February 14, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

A whipsaw week of charged decisions by the Justice Department, some favored by the president and others not, has bewildered much of Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 When President Trump learned that the Justice Department was dropping a case against a former F.B.I. official whom he considered one of his longtime enemies, his immediate response was anger. As he flipped on the television Friday and watched how the story was being covered, that anger only mounted.<\/p>\n

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has searched for an attorney general who would function much as Roy Cohn did for him as his personal lawyer and fixer in the 1970s \u2014\u00a0a warrior committed to protecting him and going after his foes. The president thought he had found that person in William P. Barr. But now, people close to Mr. Trump say, he is not so sure.<\/p>\n

The president was cheered this week when Mr. Barr moved to reduce the sentence of a convicted presidential friend, only to be shocked when the attorney general publicly called on Mr. Trump to stop tweeting about it. And after his livid reaction to the Justice Department\u2019s decision to drop a separate case, which he heard about without any advance notice, he learned that Mr. Barr was intervening more favorably on behalf of another presidential ally.<\/p>\n

The whipsaw events of recent days have bewildered much of Washington, including some of the people around the president and his attorney general. Once seen as a lock step partnership, it now may be the most complicated relationship in town. The six blocks between the White House and the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building have become a political buffer zone and no one can be entirely sure what comes next.<\/p>\n

Critics assume it is all a Kabuki dance, cynical theater meant to preserve Mr. Barr\u2019s credibility as he executes Mr. Trump\u2019s personal political agenda while pretending to look independent. And it is certainly true that, even now, Mr. Barr continues to demonstrate a willingness to personally take charge of cases with Mr. Trump\u2019s interests at stake.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

But insiders insist the tension is real, with potentially profound consequences for an administration that has redrawn the lines at the intersection of politics and law enforcement. Barely a week after being acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial, Mr. Trump is demanding that some of the people whose actions he believes led to his troubles be charged, convicted and sent to prison, and it is not clear that even Mr. Barr is willing or able to go as far as the president wants.<\/p>\n

In his only comment on the matter on Friday, Mr. Trump pushed back against Mr. Barr a day after the attorney general told ABC News that the president was making it \u201cimpossible for me to do my job\u201d<\/a> by tweeting about criminal cases and declared that he was \u201cnot going to be bullied.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump cited another comment Mr. Barr made in the same interview affirming that the president had never actually asked for any specific actions in a criminal case. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!\u201d Mr. Trump added<\/a>. The \u201cso far\u201d in there, of course, hung online as a kind of sword of Damocles waiting to fall.<\/p>\n

Only in the hours after that tweet did the news emerge that Mr. Barr\u2019s department was dropping a case against Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director blamed by Mr. Trump for his role in the investigation into Russian election interference. Two people close to the matter said the Justice Department did not give the president a heads up about the decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Then came the more welcome news<\/a> for the Oval Office that Mr. Barr had ordered a re-examination of the case of Michael T. Flynn, the president\u2019s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russia. The new review raised the question of whether Mr. Flynn will actually go to prison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
Mr. Trump has bitterly decried \u201cwhat Flynn has gone through\u201d while believing that Mr. McCabe has unfairly walked, people close to him said. The president on Friday was angrier about the decision not to prosecute Mr. McCabe than he was at Mr. Barr\u2019s comments in his interview, the people said.<\/div>\n

Mr. Trump made no mention of any of those newer developments on Twitter or in several encounters with reporters before flying to Florida for the weekend. But he sometimes waits to publicly respond to such news until after an evening watching Fox News or hearing from friends.<\/p>\n

On the fifth floor of the Justice Department, Mr. Barr\u2019s team braced for what they feared would be a stream of critiques and humiliations from the president in what one predicted could be a death by a thousand cuts, not unlike what happened to the last attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who was tormented by the president after recusing himself from the Russia investigation.<\/p>\n

Mr. Sessions, like other cabinet members, stoically absorbed Mr. Trump\u2019s invectives, rarely standing up for himself or his employees, even as the president paralyzed, undercut and neutered him. Like other original cabinet members, he left the administration publicly humiliated and vastly diminished.<\/p>\n

Mr. Barr faced many risks in speaking out on ABC, according to people close to him. But he knew that no amount of public fealty would stave off a public drubbing or even an abrupt dismissal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n