Attorney General William Barr’s bombshell statement before Congress that there was “spying” on the 2016 Trump campaign triggered a ferocious media reaction.
“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016. I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
That statement set off a media frenzy.
Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg compared Barr to Roy Cohn, the notorious chief counsel of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hearings into suspected communists in the 1950s and later Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. Cohn was “a ruthless and sleazy attack dog who taught Trump how to weaponize the legal system,” and Barr was “trying” to be like him, O’Brien said.
He took issue with the use of the word “spying” by Barr, though the attorney general made it clear that he had made no judgment on whether it was legal or not.
“Spying is cloak-and-daggerish and, when it doesn’t involve foreign governments trying to game and surveil one another, it feels untoward. It’s your neighbor looking into your bedroom window, … it’s all sort of dirty,” he wrote, adding: “Saying you’re looking into spying prejudices the perspective and prejudices the conversation.”
The Washington Post also joined the pile-on. Aaron Blake wrote in an analysis article that Barr’s testimony was “highly questionable” and cited fired FBI Director James Comey and Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence — both outspoken Trump critics.
Blake wrote that Comey had characterized FBI scrutiny of the Trump campaign as “simply an information-gathering effort.” He added that when asked whether the FBI had spied on the Trump’s campaign, Clapper had responded: “No, they were not.”
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post called via Twitter for Barr to be impeached. She then elaborated in an article headlined “William Barr, Trump toady” that Barr was using “the language of a PR spinner, not the attorney general of the United States.” She lamented Barr’s use of the “spying” as a “loaded phrase and a political accusation.”
She quoted approvingly the judgment of Laurence Tribe, an outspoken liberal and former adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, that “Barr has been gravely abusing the powers of his office.”
