Is William Barr America's Nikolai Krylenko?
Sic semper tyranus
~ Marcus Junius Brutus
“Barr is not someone inclined to harm our national security bureaucracy,” a Harvard law professor told the New York Times recently. Sorry, but I beg to differ. Whatever his motivations, whether or not he's an "institutionalist" out to protect the Department of Justice, as some claim, or the latest zombie high official to fall prey to Donald Trump's necromancing spell, Attorney General William Barr is setting the stage for destructive attacks of our government's law enforcement and intelligence agencies the likes of which we've not seen since the McCarthy era.
He has repeatedly parroted the Trump line that "government power was used to spy on American citizens," meaning the Trump campaign. He has suggested that he wanted to get to the bottom of whether "government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale" during the Russia investigation. He also slammed unnamed officials for providing "inadequate" explanations for what took place.
These statements came on the heels of his misleading letter on the Mueller report asserting that the president was exonerated of charges that he obstructed justice and that his campaign had "colluded" with Russia.
Barr, moreover, orchestrated issuance of a presidential order instructing intelligence agencies to cooperate with his "investigation of the investigators," and giving him sweeping authority to declassify and make public government secrets.
By these actions, Barr is laying the groundwork for a true witch hunt. Trump's modus operandi since Mueller was named special counsel has been to defang his inquisitors by attacking their bona fides and integrity as apolitical public servants. It's an entirely bogus and cynically amoral ploy to which establishmentarian Barr has signed on. He has whored Lady Justice out to his louche boss. As to why is anybody's guess.
Barr, as Trump's catspaw, is playing a very dangerous game. The traditional role of the attorney general is to act not only as a quasi-independent guardian of justice but also of the apolitical corps of law enforcement and justice officials whose job it is to protect America from enemies domestic and foreign. In this light, the FBI opened an investigation of members of the Trump campaign who had extensive dealings with Russian figures. Per the norm, the Bureau sought and received approval from the Department of Justice. And Mueller's 22-month investigation brought indictments against 34 people and three entities on some 200 criminal charges. Five Trump associates have been convicted, while another, Roger Stone, is awaiting trial.
Barr's actions have opened the gates to political purges of career officials and cowing the agencies tasked with fighting crime as well as hostile foreign powers. Trump thus far has succeeded in forcing out 25 top FBI and DOJ officials who had a role in investigating his 2016 campaign.
Call it what you will, but it is a purge. And William Barr is enabling yet more.
To this observer, Barr is showing great potential as the spiritual heir of none other than Nikolai Krylenko. As Josef Stalin's commissar of justice, he helped lead the Great Purges between 1935 and 1938, resulting in the deaths of between 681,000 and 1,200,000 people, including the cream of the Red Army's officer corps. Described by a British journalist at the time as "an epileptic degenerate . . . and the most repulsive type I came across in all my connections with the Bolsheviks," Krylenko, trained as a lawyer, pursued "socialist legality" and the paramountcy of political considerations over legal code in determining a person's criminal guilt or innocence. "We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more," he declared.
Yes, my comparing buttoned down Ivy-educated, devoutly Catholic, former corporate lawyer and previous attorney general Barr to a Bolsehvik monster is over the top - perhaps in terms of blood shed and victims claimed, but not in terms of moral abandonment and political cynicism. Like Krylenko, Barr works for an erratic, power-mad paranoid. One who disposes of underlings as he does wives. And no amount of slavishness will guarantee his political survival or salvage his reputation.
And here is why William Barr would be wise to pay heed to history and what happens to loyal lapdogs who suddenly fall from favor of a strongman leader:
After coming under attack by fellow communists, Krylenko was assured by Stalin, "Don't get upset. We trust you. Keep doing the work you were assigned to on the new legal code." But that evening NKVD goons arrested Krylenko and his family. Under torture, he "confessed" that he had been a "wrecker" and an enemy of Lenin. He also named 30 officials with whom he had conspired to destroy the Soviet state. Immediately following a 20-minute trial, Nikolai Krylenko's career as justice chief ended with a bullet in the back of the head.
Reassurances followed by demise. Sound familiar?
Sic semper tyranus.