William Barr may officially hold the post of U.S. attorney general, but counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance suggested on Saturday that it’s time to stop calling him that.
During a discussion with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Nance said that since he has taken his position at the Justice Department, Barr has been nothing but a lap dog for Trump.
“This man is not the Attorney General of the United States,” Nance said. “This is Donald Trump’s political commissar. … It’s a shame.”
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“This man is not the Attorney General of the United States. This is Donald Trump’s political commissar. He is there as the party chieftain who is there to enforce ideological loyalty. It’s a shame.†@MalcolmNance #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/FeeNRUWDXC
— La Femme USS John McCain Nikita (@LaF3mm3Nikita) June 1, 2019
Nance said:
[Barr’s] whole mindset is that the American experiment – this entire process of three separate but equal branches of government – shouldn’t exist and that all the powers should exist in a unitary executive who is like a supreme soviet and that anyone that takes any time to look into any malfeasance of this particular player, Donald Trump, is the problem. This man is not the attorney general of the United States. I’m going to put it on the table. It is very obvious. This is Donald Trump’s political commissar. He is there as the party chieftain who is there to enforce ideological loyalty and he will not hold Trump for any investigations. It’s a shame.
William Barr is a MAGA loyalist, not an attorney general
We have already seen William Barr use his job as the attorney general to defend Donald Trump, not the rule of law. His intentional stunt to mislead the public on the Mueller report made that clear.
But his in-depth interview with CBS took it to another level as Barr didn’t just continue to lie about Mueller’s report, but he said that Democrats – not the president – are destroying American institutions by using their oversight authority to hold Trump accountable.
As New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait wrote, Barr’s fresh comments show that he isn’t an impartial attorney general, but that he instead  “has drunk deep from the Fox News worldview of Trumpian paranoia.”
Ultimately, William Barr is free to take a job with Fox News or as one of Trump’s personal lawyers, but his conduct and rhetoric show that he has no business being the attorney general.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
