William Barr took another spin through the news cycle last week, and though it wasn’t anywhere near as uplifting as his star turn before the Jan. 6 committee, you can be sure he came out wearing the identical self-assured smirk he’s long since perfected.
A high polish precision tool of the interminable Trump campaign to stay out of prison, the former attorney general last year took a run at rehabilitating his legacy when he denounced on camera Donald Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies as “crazy,” “nonsense,” “disturbing,” “idiotic,” and “absolute rubbish,” a magnificent cadenza that will still prove spectacularly insufficient at keeping Barr from historical ignominy.
America has long endured attorneys general who’ve demonstrated far less interest in the law or the Constitution than in the political goals of the presidents who appointed them — John Mitchell went to prison for serving Richard Nixon’s nefarious purposes, for example — but Barr might well set new standards for duplicity by the time his total machinations are fully understood.
