Pretty Sure We Know What Bill Barr's Up To Right Now, Because We're Not Morons
Reflections on Bill Barr's Tuesday afternoon spent sucking his own dick.
When we wrote about Attorney General Bill Barr's de facto declaration that Donald Trump is dead to him now — or more precisely about Barr's Associated Press interview yesterday where he said out loud that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security hadn't found any significant fraud that would change the fact that Trump is a gigantic loser from Losertown — we hope you didn't think we were implying Barr was saying that for anybody's benefit but his own.
You wouldn't think that, would you? Of course not, you are not an idiot.
That said, Barr does seem to have decided he's mostly done with the Trump crime train, or at least he would really like the respected legal community, of which he laughably thinks he is a member in good standing, to think he is. There are only 49 days left until Joe Biden becomes president, after all. He's got to make a pivot to being "respectable" again somehow .
Allow us to recap Barr's big stupid self-serving Tuesday afternoon for you, to see if we can't suss out what Barr is doing right now!
An Afternoon At The White House
As we mentioned, that AP interview came out mid-afternoon. Donald Trump, in his insane syphilis brain (allegedly!) rants, has been whining that Barr's DOJ isn't helping him with his clownass "legal" attempts to steal the election. He even suggested this weekend that maybe DOJ and FBI are doing a Deep State to steal the election from him . You know, by acknowledging that Trump got his lardass handed to him on November 3.
And yet, here was Barr, openly betraying Trump by saying out loud that the election was fine. He might as well have been looking at Trump and saying, "NO FRAUD. NO FRAUD. YOU ARE THE FRAUD!"
Oh yeah, and just after that AP interview came out, Barr was spotted heading into the White House. He was reportedly there a long time.
Was he gonna get fired? Or did he have another play? What on earth was he doing? Well!
It so happens that was also approximately the exact moment Barr decided to drop Congress a TikTok saying oh by the way, he had appointed US Attorney John Durham back on October 19 as an actual Robert-Mueller-grade special counsel , to continue investigating all the nefarious Obamagates AKA Trump's and Barr's fever dreams about Obama Deep States spying on Trump and making up Russia witch hunts, just to hurt poor Trump after his huge, historic negative-three-million-vote victory in 2016. This way, even once Joe Biden is president in 49 days, there will still be somebody left behind to EXPOSE THE DEEP STATE. Or whatever.
Congress didn't know about it until yesterday, because far be it from Bill Barr to interfere with the sanctity of the election (LOL) by announcing it on October 19. According to the Times , the White House didn't know until yesterday either.
But wait? Didn't Durham's investigation, which was clearly intended to ratfuck the election out of Joe Biden's grasp, pretty much slink out of the room on its own limp dick a month before the election? Yes. That's not the point of this appointment. Barr is doing a self-serving auto-fellatio thing right now, trying to both appease Donald Trump and also regain "respectability." Try to keep up.
Allow us to present to you a very slightly paraphrased scene from the Wonkette Chatcave, so you can see how important we think it is that Barr has appointed Durham special counsel to "continue" his fruitless bullshit "Investigate the Investigators" probe into the origins of the Russia investigation:
REBECCA: like an actual special counsel? he already did an investigation and found nothing, so now special counsel?
REBECCA: just fuck these people forever
EVAN: so, so stupid
EVAN: he did it back in october, it was justVERY conveniently announced to Congress right this second
REBECCA: they had a double super secret special counsel for two months?
LIZ DYE: There's literally nothing there. I DGAF what Durham does.
EVAN: i literally said in my update that Biden should keep him on as special counsel, just for shits & giggles
LIZ: I wouldn't be surprised if Barr did this to keep it alive into Biden's term. Just because then the wingers can say Biden killed it just before the mass arrests.
AND SO FORTH. In case you missed it, what we were saying is that we DGAF what Durham does. President Biden can make him Secretary Of Finding Obama's REAL Crimes if he wants. Because Durham already did that, and he didn't find shit. In fact, all Bill Barr's super-secret extra special investigations into Obama's REAL crimes have come up with fuckall, because there's fuckall there.
But we bet Barr spent a significant portion of his afternoon at the White House trying to talk Trump off the ledge by assuring President "I'm A Big Kid Now" that Durham is still going to get to THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OBAMA DEEP STATES. So please ignore Barr saying out loud to the AP that the election was fine. He can keep his job for another month, please?
Of course, if Trump dramatically fired Barr on Twitter, that could also work fine for Barr, because it would prove Barr was one of the good, respectable guys again, right? He could go on Rachel Maddow and say he never loved Trump and was just like Anonymous! Sure, buddy!
Day Becomes Night
As day turned into night, the news hits kept coming, and we are just wondering if one of those hits might have come from Barr or his people. Specifically the one revealing, as reported by Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt in the New York Times , that Donald Trump has been chatting, as recently as last week, about issuing pre-emptive pardons not only for Rudy Giuliani, but also for his children Ivanka, Eric, and his firstborn, The Face That Broke A Thousand Mirrors. Oh yeah, also Ivanka's husband. The pardon news had started to leak earlier in the day, but it was last night where it got really explicit, like oh yeah, Trump is definitely talking about doing this, in fact he won't shut up about it.
And speaking of pardons, also last night US District Court Judge Beryl Howell unsealed a filing from waaaaaaay back in August, which revealed the Department of Justice is actively investigating a bribe-for-pardons crime deal involving SOMEBODY (whose name may or may not rhyme with Bootie Ghoulie Yanni) who represents somebody trying to bribe Trump for pardons. You know, in case anybody was curious whether Donald Trump was in the business of handing out corrupt pardons these days. (Big Wonkette post on this from Lawyer Liz forthcoming!)
Yeah, we can see why Bill Barr might be thinking it's time to abandon this sinking ship.
But don't worry, Donald Trump! John Durham is staying behind into the Biden administration to find ALL THE DEEP STATES! And they'll be VERY SORRY when you are TOTALLY EXONERATED!
You betcha.
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I'm not discounting what your saying. At all. I agree with your original diagnosis of the issues and the sentiment that something needs to be done. And I'm grateful to you for your hard work in Georgia and in Alabama.
What I am saying is this: Given the nature of this man, his administration, given the cruelty, the immortality, the glaring incompetence, the work should never have to be this hard. Given who Doug Jones was running against, he should have been able to conduct that election alone from his cell phone on a beach in St Vincent's and still win by 40 points. Roy Moore should have never been anywhere near that nomination. Decent people voting their consciences and safeguarding their own interests wouldn't let that happen. But desperate people who think they're in a life and death struggle with a soulless enemy might.
And republicans don't only exist in rural areas. We have them here, too. I know tons of them. I call one of them, "Mom." And they all have several different motivations for their conservatism.
But nearly every one of them believes the best way to save ourselves is to get the government out of their lives. Out of their paychecks, their schools, their places of worship. A lot of it doesn't make a damned lick of sense and god knows many of them demand the government take control of the bedrooms all across the land.
I'm glad the GOP's numbers were cut into where you were fighting. But that doesn't change the fact that one of the worst people to ever hold high office ANYWHERE IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD increased his numbers this time around and helped the GOP gain seats in the House and maybe hold the Senate. That he's running at 55% in rural Georgia isn't and argument against what I'm saying. It's my whole thesis.
There is something out there that isn't about revitalization or reaching out or uppity Democrats.
A couple of additional points. I'm a 28 year recovering lawyer. Any good lawyer knows both sides of an argument.
Whether I was arguing before a judge(s) or jury in person or in writing I always laid out the opposing side's arguments then burned them to the ground before they had a chance to make those arguments and before I made my own.
Of course Republicans are going to throw out the smear that Democrats are for big government, tax & spend and socialism.
Democrats are terrible at messaging and counter arguing. If I were a Democratic politician I'd say something like, "here we go with the big government, tax & spend and socialism bogeyman scare tactics. Republicans use those scare tactics to cover up how their trickle down free market is robbing you blind and free trade is shipping your job overseas". "Just so you know I'm not going to sic big government on you, raise your taxes and I doubt a Republican even knows what socialism is".