Watch Atty. Gen. William Barr Choose Donald Trump Rhetoric Over The Law | The Last Word | MSNBC

but today William Bar entered his second term of service as Republican Attorney General with a relatively solid reputation in the legal community, especially in the Republican legal community in Washington DC, William Bar's picture packers were telling the world that they would now see a more academic approach to the Attorney General's job that we saw under one of the worst and least qualified attorneys general in history, Jeff Sessions, but as of tonight William Bar seems at least as Trumpian as Jeff Sessions, if not more so, and criticism from jurists is condemning the distinguished Harvard Law School professor, the Lawrence tribe tweeted today Barr has no shame, he has become a caricature of a lawyer and a miserable excuse for a public servant, a pathetic porcine puppet for a pure president, the professor tribe tweeted that after the Attorney General, without any justification, used the

word

espionage in today's hearing spying is not a legal term, it is a Hollywood term, it is a

word

for screenwriters, not attorneys general , is a word for clever, they know it's all about having a beer with their friends and not being especially precise about their language and in this case it's a word that the Attorney General threw into the Trump propaganda machine where Fox & Friends now they will say forever that the Attorney General says the federal government was spying on the Trump campaign when the Attorney General was Pressed about the use of that word, he admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to support that claim, none at all, and it is why Professor Tribe said Barr has no shame, among other things, such as why Professor Tribe says the Attorney General has become a caricature of a lawyer once again Today the Attorney General refused to say whether anyone in the White House has seen the mesh report and if anyone outside the Department of Justice has seen parts or all of the special counsels report as anyone in the White House has seen any of the reports you know I'm not going to do that, you know , like I said, I'm landing the plane right now and you know I've been willing to discuss my letters and the process in the future, but the reports are coming out next week and I just won't go into the details of the process until the planes are in land more than once today Attorney Jones said he would deliver the Mullah's report to Congress next week The Attorney General knows that Congress will be in recess next week and that could silence Congress's immediate response to the report and once again today One of the most revealing comments the Attorney General made had nothing to do with the mesh report and everything to do with William Barr's survey.

As the most Trumpian Republican member of Congress yesterday, the Attorney General's most shocking moment, his least legal comment came when asked about his leadership in a change of legal position by the Department of Justice so that the State Bar The Attorney General is now using the full force and power of the Justice Department to try to destroy the Affordable Care Act in the lawsuit. Now let's take a look at some of that exchange from yesterday again because it shows the Attorney General giving a non-legal answer to the question a purely political answer that has nothing to do with the litigation that he was asked about and that now leads against the Affordable Care Act was successful in this lawsuit that you support and the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is struck down millions of Americans who currently receive health insurance coverage under the law are at risk of losing that coverage .

Am I right that I think the president has made it clear that not only is he in favor of pre-existing conditions, but that he would like to take action on a comprehensive health plan? So he is proposing a substitute for assassinating Obama, which is a completely disgraceful response from an attorney general. The answer to the congressman's question was one word yes. If William Bar succeeds in destroying the Affordable Care Act in the American courts, Americans will lose health insurance coverage which is an undeniable fact and an undeniable legal outcome of the case if William Bar is successful not only William Bar refused to answer that question the words you put where the real answer would go are worse than childish, you tried to suggest to the adults in Congress that President Trump would immediately get a replacement for Obamacare passed in Congress when that day, the same day in that William Bar wins in court, no one will lose health insurance because Donald Trump will rush through Congress in one afternoon a replacement for Obamacare that will go into effect the same day that was an offensive Trumpian response by the Attorney General and was addressed today of the wall, the Attorney General of the United States was once again Trump's cheerleader in a hearing in Congress and this time it was about building The wall we have to stop the flow of drugs from Mexico or make a much bigger dent, that is a of the reasons why I believe a wall

barr

ier system along the southern border is an important part of what every expert on the subject reports. that most of the illegal drugs that enter this country from Mexico arrive through the legal ports of entry, where they are smuggled into trucks and other vehicles that pass through the legal ports of entry, but the question wasn't even about that , the question was about the opioid crisis in the United States that is what they asked the Attorney General that is why he wants a wall his response was to build a wall build the wall for opioids opioids are manufactured in the United States they are sold legally in the United States United States and the opioids that are imported into this country come as regular legal shipments of cargo through our legal ports of entry and those opioids killed people and this Attorney General's response to a Republican senator from Arkansas who expressed concern about what What opioids are doing to their constituents in Arkansas is building the wall William Bar knows There will never be a wall and William Bart should know a wall would do nothing about the opioid crisis in America and what William Bart responds to today It means that William Bart doesn't care about the opioid crisis or at least he doesn't care.

I can't find the words to express his true concern about the opioid crisis. Instead, it was building the wall. William Bar has no idea what to do about the opioid crisis. Judging by his testimony today, he is not one bit smarter than Donald Trump on the opioid crisis. He was not in today once again today the Attorney General indicated that after delivering his version of the mesh report that he considers appropriate for release to the public he will continue to consult with the chairman of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to see if there is any How to reveal to the committee more information from the Moller report that the committee might want?

Republican Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seems barely interested in seeing the redacted version of the Ball report and will ask nothing more than the president. of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, has already been given the committee's subpoena power to subpoena the entire unredacted Mullah report and said today that the Attorney General still needs to release the full Moeller report, we have only the experts we need to consider the Attorney General's report. today's testimony Bill Cotterell was Acting Attorney General of the United States in the Obama administration, he also served in the Department of Justice during the Clinton administration, and as many of you already know, Neal Katyal actually wrote the Department of Justice rules that govern the Muller report that Emily Bazelon has been writing about the Supreme Court and the Justice Department for most of her career and is now at the New York Times Magazine.

His new book is dedicated to the new movement to transform the US attorney general's office and end mass incarceration and the political dynamics of what we are witnessing today and what is to come when William Bars' edition of the Malla report is published. We have John Holman, a national affairs analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, he is a co-anchor and executive of Show Times The Circus and Neal, let me come right to you with your review of the report. The Attorney General's testimony today, well, I think the only success it had was that it made Matt Whittaker look pretty good by comparison.

I mean, I have the privilege of teaching at Georgetown and one of the things you have to do before you go to law school is I have to take an LSAT with a knowledge. I think the analogy after today is that the presidency is for Trump, since the attorney general must resist. We have, as you just said, a Trumpian attorney general and I never thought he would say those words. bad bar, but unfortunately we're at that point now and I would isolate three things, all of which you've given in the first place: your views on the Muller report and actually hiding it from the American people that you're willing to redact here and there is not even willing to go and seek a court order to remove grand jury material number two him and his destruction of the Affordable Care Act this is a real problem, the Department of Justice will always take the view that if there is a reasonable argument to defend a statute, you make it so you don't go to court and attack the statute and try to gut it, that's what he's done here and today he completely changed the standard of defense because he said well, as long as there is some plausible argument for abandoning the defense, that's enough and that's never been the standard and we're seeing the fruits of this even this afternoon because now it's not just the Affordable Care Act, sent a letter that the Department of Justice slipped to Congress this afternoon.

Saying now I'm not going to defend a statute that prevents female genital mutilation, he calls it unconstitutional, so I have no idea what comes after this and then you know number three is that Tim joined the paper hat group. aluminum with all this espionage business. and the FBI in 2016 was against Trump and things like that. I mean, there is an ongoing investigation into that, as far as I think everyone knows, this investigation is going nowhere and he even admitted that later, so this is not really acting like the Attorney General of the United States, this is acting like Nancy Pelosi said tonight, like Donald Trump's Attorney General, Emily, uh, said yesterday on the I'll say you never expected me to say that Attorney General William bar is acting in a Trumpian way, right?

I ever expected to hear Neal Katyal say that since Gerald Barr was acting in a Trumpian way and let me just love him and Neal remembers this when Neal and I first talked about the Attorney General's first letter about the Muller report, we did with some hope. we did it with the greatest optimism we greeted it with the greatest optimism possible we gave it an optimistic reading we have been struggling to find some optimism since then you know if you go back further into the story of William Bars when he was in the George HW Bush administration pushed a very broad theory of executive power, including granting pardons to more people under the Iran-contra framework, so I think this belief that maybe because he was associated with HW he was going to be the kind of moderate force that has proven to be wrong. and I think if you go back and look at his earlier writings, including the memo he wrote

last

summer, it seems like they're establishing more of the kind of

rhetoric

that you see today than the kind of figure that adults crave.

He is a figure that people imagine, let's listen to what Adam Schiff said today about this. It was deeply disturbing to see the Attorney General make such an arrogant suggestion that they were spying on the Trump campaign which may please the president who has been pushing this idea of ​​a deep state coup, but it was a disservice to the men and women of the FBI and the intelligence community, it was yet another indication that the Attorney General feels that it is his job to carry out the orders of the president, that is not his job, we are certainly going to do it.

I want to get to the bottom of what you were referring to what you are talking about if there is more to this than just saying the words the president wanted to hear John Haben it seems like every time the Attorney General speaks or now writes something he gives something to the Fox propaganda machine, the Trump propaganda machine that they will use, yes, well, I think it is easy and often correct to mock the congressional hearings for their usefulness, their uselessness, their posturing, their superficiality, these two days with Barr have been incredibly edifying and enlightening for everyone who is paying. attention, if you are a democrat it is now clear, despite all the questions that have arisen that we have alluded to here, that many jurists, some even on the left, who said that he is an institutionalist, may be fine with what we have discovered in the

last

two days is that there is no lack and there is no longer ambiguity: he is a political pirate and that clarifies the battle lines, I think in a useful way for the Democrats in the future, the ambiguous attorney general who seems to betrying to play Abaddon's traditional attorney general tries to be faithful to the institution tries to be faithful to the rule of law rather than fulfilling a strictly political function.

He's a complicated guy to deal with, it's much easier once the veil has been lifted and once the scales have been lowered. I've fallen in love with people's eyes and they say okay, this is what we're dealing with with an explicitly political Attorney General that Neill suggested that Rafi is worse or better than Matt Whittaker, but he's the same as Matt Whittaker in the sense of that it was a purely political instrument and I. I think that will set the terms if Democrats are now clear that that leads to certain types of tactical and strategic decisions that they will make in the future knowing that I think it's helpful in that regard.

I know the Attorney General said today he said once again today that he is just using the rules that you wrote for him, yes, no, I mean not at all, he is totally distorting those rules to try to serve his purposes of trying to hide information to the American people. I mean, he said the rules require the molars report to be confidential, that's only when Muller delivers the report to the Attorney General, it doesn't say anything about when the Attorney General delivers the report to Congress or the American people and then, of In fact, part of the regulations provides a mechanism for public disclosure of this information and I think John is right in saying, you know, the politics of this is making it clear that I guess for me, Lawrence, the big issue is not the politics, It's something about the soul of the country, the soul of the Department of Justice, I mean, when I worked there in two.

Attorneys general in different administrations did things that went against their political instincts. I remember almost throwing up when we had to defend the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, for example, but we did it because we felt it was our duty, the Constitution requires the President to faithfully execute the laws, not to gut them, this attorney general alone he wants destructive laws like the Affordable Care Act and the Female Genital Mutilation Act, and that's really the most antithetical thing to the rule of law imaginable that the Attorney General is attempting. tear down the law instead of trying to protect it well, this is what Nancy Pelosi said today, let me tell you how disheartening and disappointing it is that our country's top law enforcement official is going off the rails yesterday and today is the Attorney General of the United States of America not Donald Trump's Attorney General Emily that's what I thought William Bar would want to avoid that he would do and you shouldn't do so much to avoid those types of comments you just have to speak much more carefully I might even keep the positions he currently holds if he spoke more carefully, more precisely, more legally and didn't build the wall and spy and then fake it when he successfully takes down Obamacare in the courts. pretend that no one will lose health insurance.

I mean, these are crazy things the Attorney General can say, so I have a couple questions. One is what's the longer game here in terms of the FBI in terms of law enforcement officials when you look at it. terms like espionage, which the Justice Department had previously said was not the case, what effect does that have on the people who do this job and try to do it conscientiously and you're supposed to be the leader of that agency? What position does that leave you? At Visa Fri, all of these people know that we are used to thinking of Republicans as the people who are more thoughtful about defending the work of law enforcement and investigations and now we are all changing sides in this conversation.

I wonder what the implications and consequences are. are for Barr in the long run, gentlemen who made the biggest contribution to Trump's campaign today Donald Trump or William bar oh wow, good question, I mean, I think I'm not sure that in the end we talked about this in the show before if we think this is a foolish strategy that he is not playing even if you take the lucky position what would be the best way to play this game to fight this battle from his point of view if you think it was foolish for him to do what has done all along, this is all short-sighted and wrong, not only in terms of their long-term position as the Department of Justice, but also to win this particular fight over the Moller report, then all of this represents no contribution whatsoever. .

Trump is trying to make a contribution to Trump's campaign. I'm just not sure he's doing it very effectively and I will say to what Neal said that obviously you can't help but be discouraged by all of this and obviously there are bigger issues at stake but what's coming is a war, this is still this Muller report every day, the stakes are actually rising now instead of letting the air out of the balloon as people thought for a brief moment when it was first reported, this is a war that we're going to be in the middle of right now and I understand that it's discouraging and discouraging, but if I'm fighting that battle on the Democratic side I want to understand my enemy and the type of game and what the types of mistakes they're likely to make, I think Barr has revealed a lot about himself, the weaknesses of himself as a political actor over the course of the last two days, and in that sense, I think it's encouraging for Democrats because this is a Guy, I think who we can catch, we're going to have to break it down there.

Neal cut in and shouted Emily Bazelon John Heilemann. Thank you all for starting us off tonight. I really appreciate it. Thank you for visiting our YouTube channel. Subscribe by clicking the button below to learn more. from the last word and the rest of MSNBC