Opinion: The high cost of William Barr’s spying allegations
Attorney General William P. Barr appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing on Jan. 15. By David Kris and Michael Morell Michael Morell Contributing columnist covering intelligence and national security. Bio Follow April 16 at 10:00 AM David Kris, former assistant attorney general for national security from 2009 to 2011, is co-founder of the consulting firm Culper Partners.
First, Barr’s statements supported a narrative that the FBI and intelligence community were acting improperly and illegally when they investigated links between the Trump campaign and Russian election interference. This is not principally because “spying” is a pejorative word ; both of us have used it to refer to wholly legitimate government surveillance in other contexts.
Third, although Barr focused on prior FBI leadership, rather than the bureau’s rank and file, Barr’s statements also resonated with prior presidential attacks on the agency and the intelligence community as a whole. A better approach would have been to use more neutral language, to have acknowledged the importance of proper investigation as well as the risk of improper investigation, or to have simply referenced the forthcoming inspector general’s report and left it at that.
Is there any justification for Barr’s reference to “spying"? Perhaps he is thinking several moves ahead, trying to placate — rather than pander to — Trump in an effort to avoid a potentially worse outcome, such as direct presidential interference. If Barr anticipates that the forthcoming IG report will not show any major wrongdoing, for example, perhaps he is trying to establish his bona fides in advance of delivering that news.
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