Eric Holder, who served as the United States’ attorney general under President Barack Obama, excoriated Attorney General William Barr as “unfit” to serve in his position in a Wednesday Washington Post op-ed.Barr has experienced a tumultuous and controversial tenure in the job, with many critics charging that he has acted more like President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.Holder described Barr’s conduct as “plainly ideological” “nakedly partisan” and “deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official.”Holder sounded the alarm about Barr “using partisan talking points bearing no resemblance to the facts his own department has uncovered” in his response to the Inspector General report.Barr disputed the findings of the DOJ’s Inspector General report into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, suggesting the FBI acted “in bad faith” by opening the probe. Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.Eric Holder, who served as the United States’ attorney general under President Barack Obama, excoriated Attorney General William Barr as “unfit” to serve in his position in a Wednesday Washington Post op-ed.Holder, who served as Obama’s attorney general from 2009 to 2015, opened the op-ed by stating that while he is “reluctant to publicly criticize my successors” Barr’s recent conduct, is so “plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official” that he felt he needed to respond. Barr, who was confirmed to his current post in January 2019, has experienced a tumultuous and controversial tenure in the job, with many critics charging that he has acted more like President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer than the nation’s attorney general. Most recently, Barr has drawn sharp criticism for publicly disputing the findings of the DOJ’s Inspector General report into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, suggesting the FBI acted “in bad faith” by opening the probe. In his op-ed, Holder first expressed concern about remarks Barr made an event at the Federalist Society last month, which Holder blasted for advocating for “essentially unbridled executive power, dismissing the authority of the legislative and judicial branches — and the checks and balances at the heart of America’s constitutional order.”Barr also raised eyebrows in that speech by delving straight into partisan politics, saying, “in waging scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “Resistance” against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.”Holder said that by making those remarks, “he exposed himself as a partisan actor, not an impartial law enforcement official.”The former AG also took Barr to task for stating a few weeks later at a DOJ ceremony that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need,” seemingly threatening localities that aren’t, in his view, sufficiently respectful to law enforcement with fewer resources. Holder charged that “no one who understands — let alone truly respects — the impartial administration of justice or the role of law enforcement could ever say such a thing,” calling Barr’s comments “antithetical to the most basic tenets of equality and justice.”Later in the op-ed, Holder sounded the alarm about Barr “using partisan talking points bearing no resemblance to the facts his own department has uncovered” in his response to the Inspector General report, which concluded that the Bureau had “authorized purpose” in launching the Russia investigation in July 2016.”I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr told NBC correspondent Pete Williams. “I think there were gross abuses…and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.”Holder said that Barr’s response to the IG report proved that Barr’s “words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution” and worried that Barr’s conduct “running political interference for an increasingly lawless president — will wreak lasting damage.”Read more:AG William Barr went to bat for Trump in a wild interview where he baselessly claimed the FBI acted in ‘bad faith’ during the Russia probeWilliam Barr warned that communities that don’t ‘support and respect’ cops could lose ‘the police protection they need’Attorney General William Barr is disputing a watchdog’s conclusion that the Russia probe was justified
Eric Holder calls Barr ‘unfit’ to hold office in Washington Post op-ed – Business Insider
