Wall Street Journal editorial board: Dems vilifying Barr for ‘acting like a real Attorney General’

The Wall Street Journal editorial board on Wednesday excoriated Democrats for making Attorney General William Barr out to be a “villain,” defending Barr as merely “acting like a real Attorney General.”

“Washington pile-ons are never pretty, but this week’s political setup of Attorney General William Barr is disreputable even by Beltway standards,” the board wrote in an op-ed published just hours after Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

The editorial, which was shared by President Trump on Twitter, slammed Democrats’ criticism of Barr’s handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s election interference and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

https://t.co/S34Q0NY6Ju

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2019

The board also took issue with Mueller, saying that the letter he wrote to Barr expressing concerns with how the attorney general summarized his investigation amounted to “posterior covering.”

{mosads}”Democrats leapt on the letter as proof that Mr. Barr was somehow covering for Donald Trump when he has covered up nothing,” the board wrote, arguing that Barr’s four-page memo adequately summarized the chief findings of Mueller’s investigation.

The board wrote that the “trashing of Barr shows how frustrated and angry Democrats continue to be that the special counsel came up empty in his Russia collusion probe.”

Mueller’s probe did not uncover evidence to conclude conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow during the 2016 election. But the report noted that Mueller could not “conclusively determine” that no criminal conduct occurred in regard to obstruction of justice.

“He was supposed to be [Democrats’] fast-track to impeachment,” the board wrote. “Now they’re left trying to gin up an obstruction tale, but the probe wasn’t obstructed and there was no underlying crime. So they’re shouting and pounding the table against Bill Barr for acting like a real Attorney General.”

Barr has faced increasing scrutiny from Democrats since he sent a four-page memo to Congress in March summarizing Mueller’s report. The memo was widely lambasted by Democrats, who accused Barr of acting as Trump’s personal attorney, rather than the American people’s attorney general.

It was revealed Tuesday that Mueller wrote to Barr multiple times in March to raise concerns about how Barr initially summarized the findings. Mueller, in a letter to Barr, said that his characterization of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”

At least seven Democratic presidential candidates and Democratic lawmakers have called on Barr to resign following the revelations and Barr’s testimony Wednesday.