OPINION:
William P. Barr is about to become, as Fox’s Trump-trashing Sheppard Smith put it on Tuesday, the “new boss” of Robert Mueller’s Russia election-interference investigation.
Unless you’ve been watching endless reruns of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” you know Mr. Barr is President Trump’s choice to succeed Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
And you know Mr. Trump fired Mr. Sessions for not ridding him of the meddlesome Mr. Mueller and his galaxy-wide Trump-Putin conspiracy probe.
So will Mr. Barr rid Mr. Trump of Mr. Meddlesome?
Well, with the Senate Judiciary Committee about to turn thumbs up for Mr. Barr as the 86th attorney general of the United States, the first thing Mr. Barr tells the committee on Tuesday is that he won’t — that’s right, WON’T — do what Mr. Trump fired Mr. Sessions for not doing.
Understandably, at that very moment of truth, a hush falls over the Senate hearing room. All eyes focus on the halo turning 360s over Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin’s head. He asks Mr. Barr if he would tell Mr. Trump to take the AG job and shove if Mr. Trump ever dares to ask Mr. Barr to fire Mr. Mueller.
If in his response Mr. Barr bats an eyelash, I miss it. Instead, Mr. Barr calmly says that he will not allow anyone, including and specifically the president of the United States, to “bully” him into doing anything Mr. Barr thinks will keep him from being physically strong, mentally awake, morally straight — and prepared.
Specifically, Mr. Barr says he would not follow a Trump order to fire the special counsel — unless, that is, Mr. Mueller is bad enough to justify a door-slamming bye-bye.
Not exactly equivalent to George Washington’s fessing up to dad about the apple tree. But then what else would you tell a gang of senators who have you by the two that can really hurt?
It can also be said that Mr. Trump will have Mr. Barr by the same two once he’s the new AG.
Mr. Barr also reveals to the committee that Mr. Mueller is a good friend of his, at which point some in the room think they hear a choking sound coming from the other end of the mall.
If Mr. Sessions is watching the hearing on TV, he’s probably remembering he was a tea-party Republican who was the first federal lawmaker with the guts and foresight to endorse Mr. Trump, only to endure Mr. Trump’s round-the-clock Twitter-bombing before finally bailing.
Mr. Barr, at 68, says he’s too old to be scared into doing anything for anybody for reasons that aren’t on the up and up — but then so was Mr. Sessions.
Whatever his fate afterward, if confirmed, Mr. Barr will go down in history as the first repeat offender in that office in its 230 years of its existence.
From the first attorney general, Edmund Jennings Randolph (three first names, one great AG?), no one has been separately confirmed for AG under two different presidents at two widely separated periods.
It’s been 28 years since Mr. Barr got his first nod for AG. The kinder, gentler President George H.W. Bush named him to succeeded liberal Republican AG Dick Thornburgh, who in turn was conservative lord and savior Ronald Reagan’s last AG appointee.
Big tent and all that.
If there’s anyone knows what good lurks in the hearts of men, it may be Mr. Barr, who has been around the track enough times to justify naming it after him. He may be playing possum before his Senate inquisitors. He may know he can bank on utter and complete objectivity from his friend, the special counsel, despite Mr. Mueller’s having hired only Democratic donors and lawyers for his “Trump-Putin: Monster or Menace?” probe.
What Mr. Barr is revealing is a huge downside for Mr. Trump.
The president’s surrogates among Republicans in Congress and in much of the conservative press have been pushing the idea that Mr. Mueller is as big and bad as alligators come in the Washington swamp.
So if his report claims to show Mr. Trump connived with Mr. Putin to throw the 2016 election The Donald’s way, Trump loyalists and a good chunk of independents will think they have good reason to dismiss the claim as the invention of the Democrat-Never Trump resistance.
The upside is also formidable.
Mr. Barr’s friendship with Mr. Mueller’s goes back to the days when they both served in the Bush 41 administration. Their bond is so close that their wives attend Bible-study class together and Mr. Mueller showed up at the weddings of Mr. Barr’s children.
So if Mr. Barr keeps hands off the Mueller investigation and if the resulting report finds no Putin-Mr. Trump election connivance, then the finding will be all the more believable to current Trump skeptics and harder for the never-Trump press to pooh-pooh.
If there’s anyone who can’t possibly know whether the upside or downside prevails, it’s Mr. Trump, who on watching the full Senate confirm Mr. Barr next week will doubtlessly say to himself, “Great, I’ve got my wish — now what?”
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