Barr’s Blatant Hypocrisy Surfaces from Clinton Impeachment

Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, also known as user @emptywheel on Twitter, sent out a few tweets on Monday morning expressing interest in hearing Attorney General William Barr explain his hypocrisy in why former President Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached in the late 1990s while current President Donald Trump didn’t for his present misdeeds.

Wheeler explained to her Twitter audience her hope that a Democratic lawmaker will ask “why [Barr] thought impeaching Clinton over lying,” regarding an inappropriate relationship he had as president, was justified, while Trump’s actions in office regarding allegations of obstructing justice wasn’t.

I'm really looking forward to a Democrat (I sort of imagine it'll be @jacksonleeTX18) asking Bill Barr why he thought impeaching Clinton over lying about a blowjob was cool but Trump didn't obstruct bc the evidence of any underlying crime wasn't enough to charge him.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 22, 2019

Wheeler also shared a screen captured image of a letter Barr sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last summer, in which Barr, then not part of the Trump administration, had written over “[concerns] with the institutions of the Presidency and the Department of Justice.”

Here's Barr, in his audition memo, suggesting that impeaching Clinton for lying about a blowjob was proper.

There was no underlying crime. Just … a thoroughly inappropriate blowjob. Kind of like Trump's thoroughly inappropriate cheering of Russia.https://t.co/cTEijcpmwl pic.twitter.com/roMO0vrPsV

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 22, 2019

Within that letter, detailed by Wheeler in the image she shared, Barr wrote, “Indeed, the acts of obstruction alleged against Presidents Nixon and Clinton in their respective impeachments were all such ‘bad acts’ involving the impairment of evidence.”

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Wheeler hopes Barr will explain what the difference between Clinton’s misconduct and Trump’s might be, and why the former’s actions are impeachable versus the latter’s.

“There was no underlying crime” in Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, Wheeler added within her tweet, just an inappropriate relationship that the former president had.

“Kind of like Trump’s thoroughly inappropriate cheering of Russia,” Wheeler added.

Barr has faced significant criticism over the weekend regarding what some are saying was a blatant attempt to paint Trump in a positive light ahead of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation being released.

In addition to a four-page letter to Congress detailing what he said was in the Mueller report almost a month before the actual report was released, Barr also held a widely disparaged press conference hours before a redacted version of the report was made available to the public. Both the letter and the press conference failed to point out several instances of questionable conduct by the president.