We know Trump's second Attorney General, William Barr, tried to shield his boss from prosecution for his 2016 election subversion, what later became known as the "hush money" case.

We know this because in 2017 Barr fired Preet Bharara, the lead federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. Bharara had committed the unforgivable offense of looking into allegations that Trump violated campaign finance law in the runup to the 2016 election.

The case wasn't really about hush money though. It was about failure to disclose campaign expenditures, and then falsifying business records as part of a cover up. Trump's purpose was to prevent voters from learning about his tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels after the Access Hollywood tape surfaced. The first scandal almost scuttled Trump's bid for the White House; the second one would have sunk him.

Preet Bharara's successor at SDNY, Jeffrey Berman, also saw merit in the "hush money" case. How could he not? The same federal indictment that sent Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen to prison referred to the director and beneficiary of Cohen's actions, Trump himself, as "Individual One."

Barr could fire Bharara, but the case continued to circle Trump's meaty orange head like a great, dark raptor. By 2020, the case was approaching maturity, and Trump was getting rattled. So he goosed Barr, and Barr pressured Berman to drop the case. When Berman wouldn't sweep Trump's crimes under the rug, Barr fired him too.

In 2024, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg finally brought the case against Trump and secured guilty verdicts on 34 felony counts.

The hush money case wasn't the first time Barr had run interference for Trump. In 2019, Barr had delayed release of the Mueller Report, instead issuing his own white-washed summary of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Barr totally misrepresented Mueller's conclusions, which were pretty damning even if not actionable at the time. (Mueller secured over 30 indictments, convictions, and/or guilty pleas. But Justice Department policy held that a sitting president could not be indicted. So Trump skated.)

Mueller's Report was crystal clear: Trump obstructed justice at least 10 times, and the investigation could not rule out collusion between the Trump Campaign and the Kremlin.

Now we find out that William Barr also blocked the Justice Department's inquiry into an illegal ten-million-dollar cash contribution from Egypt's dictator Al-Sisi to Trump's 2016 campaign.

Barr is nothing if not consistent.

Authoritarian leaders around the world are working together in a loose-knit web of corruption. Their alliances cross all religious, ideological, and geographical boundaries. What unites dictators from disparate lands is their common interest in money and power. It's totally transactional. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And the Devil take the hindmost.
And that's why Donald Trump is so admiring of the likes of Vladimir Putin, Victor Orbán, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jing Ping, etc. He wants desperately to be a member of their club.

And sycophants like Bill Barr are eager to help in any way they can.

[milwaukeeindependent.com].

[thedemlabs.org]

[ncronline.org]