Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No. Try responding to what people say, instead of the straw men or the people you see on MSNBC or whatever it is you're doing.
I don't need to speculate about Barr's motives. I have a serious problem with what I see him doing. I can infer his motives, but that's secondary. I have been posting about what he has said to Congress, in writing and in person. You, on the other hand, say we should trust him because of motives you ascribe to him -- he's going to worried about his reputation in DC, you say. I think that's nonsense on stilts, but let's be clear, your argument about Barr is that we should trust him because we should assume that his motives are, if not pure, self-interested in a way that will work out for us.
But, you ducked my question, which was about the implications of something you just said. Let's suppose that Barr is not "biased" towards the political party in which he has been involved for decades, or towards his President boss and the party's leader. He just a well-intentioned believer in a near-imperial unitary executive. Doesn't that give him a strong motive to mislead Congress about what's in the Mueller Report?
As for Rosenstein, I literally just posted that we should assume that he is well intentioned. I'll wait here while you go back and look the post, which was at 9:32 am Pacific Time. No really, it's OK, I'll just wait. OK. Back now? See?
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1. If you think Rosenstein is well intentioned, how do you square that with your opinion that he is being swayed by party and the fact that he works for Barr (for 2 more weeks)? He’s well intentioned but ethically malleable?
2. Barr’s belief in a strong unitary executive should lead him to state the President cannot be guilty of obstruction, rather than explain why reasonable prosecutorial discretion precludes charges. If you believe in the former, citing the latter as basis to refrain is self-contradiction. But yes, as a pragmatist, Barr could see that if he ran with the former as justification for refraining, he’d face scrutiny.
Barr could not win here. What he did may have been the only way to duck a showdown on unitary exec power he might lose before even this SCOTUS. In the end, he may have been protecting his untested unitary exec theory rather than misleading Congress. Ultimately, he has no reason to mislead Congress to protect that theory as it speaks to merely criminal prosecution, not impeachment.
