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More than1,100 former DOJ officials call for Barr’s resignation

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In an action that further underscores that Attorney General William Barr is shattering norms, 1,110 former Department of Justice federal prosecutors and former Department of Justice officials are calling for Barr to resign. This is part of a firestorm sparked by Barr last week after he intervened to significantly lower the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation for Donald Trump’s longtime friend and political associate Roger Stone.

However, given what many analysts now call Trump’s “revenge tour” and Trump now having virtually unfettered presidential powers (read George Conway’s op-ed piece in the Washington Post There is no one to stop Trump now) their call is unlikely to cause Barr to budge.

The resignation call came in a statement published on The Medium. Some excerpts:

“As former DOJ officials, we each proudly took an oath to support and defend our Constitution and faithfully execute the duties of our offices. The very first of these duties is to apply the law equally to all Americans. This obligation flows directly from the Constitution, and it is embedded in countless rules and laws governing the conduct of DOJ lawyers. The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that “the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice”; that the Department’s legal decisions “must be impartial and insulated from political influence”; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be “exercised free from partisan consideration.”

And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes… Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.

….Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President.”

This line is highlighted in green:

“Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”

They detail Barr’s many reassurances and say they don’t believe them and “because we have little expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department’s career officials to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend nonpartisan, apolitical justice.”

They express solidarity with the prosecutors that quit the case and end with this:

“Our simple message to them is that we — and millions of other Americans — stand with them. And we call on every DOJ employee to follow their heroic example and be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office; to withdraw from cases that involve such directives or other misconduct; and, if necessary, to resign and report publicly — in a manner consistent with professional ethics — to the American people the reasons for their resignation. We likewise call on the other branches of government to protect from retaliation those employees who uphold their oaths in the face of unlawful directives. The rule of law and the survival of our Republic demand nothing less.”

Go to the link and read it in its entirety.

Meanwhile, in an article in Time Magazine, Joyce White Vance, distinguished professor of the practice of law at the University of Alabama, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst also called on Barr to step down in light of Trump’s later statement that Trump has the power to intervene whenever he wants.

“So if Barr in fact disagrees with Trump’s claim that a President can intervene in criminal prosecutions, including and especially those of his own close friends and associates, he must say so. Silence in the face of so egregious a claim signals agreement. Allowing such an assertion to go unchallenged undermines the credibility of the Justice Department and our system of justice itself. If the President refuses to correct his tweet and insists that DOJ must submit its prosecutions to his control whenever he chooses to intervene, the Attorney General’s only response can be to resign. There is no way to avoid further damage to DOJ, the rule of law and the country if Trump’s view stands.”

Photo by Office of Public Affairs from Washington DC – Candlelight Vigil 2019-185, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79149633