Attorney General William Barr talks race, justice and law in America [Video]

Attorney General William “Bill” Barr has shown himself to be one of President Trump’s very best picks through the course of his first Presidential term of office. This very measured, very calm man has a gift of making legal sense out of chaotic and otherwise very passion-filled situations. It is certainly the truth that presently in the United States there are many highly passion-filled situations taking place simultaneously, and in fact, these are intertwined.

While there is room for debate in some circles about how, or even if the coronvirus pandemic, the Black Lives / Antifa and anti-police disorder are connected, when listening to AG Barr about these issues, it becomes clear that passionate reactions are not the answer, but that an approach where intellect presides over emotions is vitally important to repairing this situation. It is further important that the opposite of this, emotions presiding over intellect, is the prime cause of the problems, and exacerbating this factor is the fact that many of the people involved on this side of the problem are also drug users, smoking, by some accounts, great amounts of cannabis. This affects judgement, and it also creates or exacerbates addiction in many of the people using cannabis and other drugs. While it is not very well accepted or in fashion to point out that drug use is problematic and damaging, we now have increasing evidence to prove that this is in fact true, has always been true and always will be true. The disintegration of the United States into the extremely odd factions of urban cultural Marxists and ideological “everyone is right but white Christian males” leftists, and the rest of us, who live in both cities and mainly in rural areas who have to rely more on personal responsibility to live, shows the truth of this. In this context, we present the two-part interview AG Barr gave Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. We will give timestamps for the various themes he covers, and then further comment.

AG WIlliam Barr Interview Part I

[00:00] CHAZ / CHOP, city riots and peaceful demonstrations: What will be done to bring law and order back

[01:55] Does the Federal Government have a responsibility to protect the citizens in CHOP / CHAZ?

[02:45] What is the impact of the pushback against law enforcement / the difficulty of being a police officer in the United States at present.

[03:45] Why Minneapolis struck such a chord in the African-American community, and the work that has been done to make equal protection under the law completely a reality.

[04:18] Incidence of the shooting of black unarmed men has dropped – five years ago it was 38, last year it was ten, and six of those ten were actually attacking police officers at the time they were shot. There are 8,000 homicides of African-Americans in the country each year; of these, only ten were killed in altercations with white police officers. 

[05:30] Should the police have qualified immunity? AG Barr says, yes, absolutely.

[06:29] The Attorney General is like the the sheriff in an Old West Movie when the mob comes to the  jail, either wanting to hang the person or release him from jail. The AG has to enforce due process of law without regard to what any mob wands.

[07:10] Regarding the officer who killed Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta: Did this case merit Murder I charges? AG Barr could not say much because he may have to in an official manner later, but he did point out that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation did not complete its investigation, nor was there a grand jury convened before the charges were pressed against the officer.

[08:16] A fundamental difference between what happened in Atlanta and what happened with George Floyd in Minneapolis (Here I disagree, more on that later – SH)

[08:31] Do you think there is systemic racism in this country? Barr: No. There is racism and it manifests on occasion, but there is no overall systemic structure that is racist in the US. There is still need of leveling out protections for everyone in some areas of the country… a work in progress.

[09:41] Regarding freedom of speech and Big Tech censoring such on social media platforms: The Department of Justice looks to prevent these media from defunding and censoring sites for their point of view.

[10:40] Senator Tom Cotton was called by Twitter and told to take down a tweet saying that the police want military support, or else he would lose his account entirely, as an example. The “bait and switch” practice that has been employed by Twitter and other Big Tech social network providers.

[13:00] The problem of such Big Tech being able to galvanize opinion and thus control large numbers of people.

Part II of the interview is here:

[00:00] Continuing the topic of censorship of political debate.

[00:40] On the adoption of the use of mail-in ballots by given states, AG Barr sees this as something that facilitates massive voter fraud. AG Barr’s comments here are critical because of his dispassionate approach. He notes that mail-in ballots “open the floodgates” to all sorts of problems. One major one is the fact that the ballots in the mailstream easily compromise the notion of the “secret ballot”, which every American has the right to have.

[02:15] On Senator Hawley’s bill granting Americans the right to sue Big Tech social media outlets if these companies if they enforce terms unfairly, as Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube all have been doing.

[02:46] AG Barr said he came back to public service to “restore confidence in the system” – how does this happen? Has there been a double standard as regards justice.

[04:02] Why did the DOJ charge Michael Flynn and not charge Jim Comey, et. al.

[05:04] On John Durham’s criminal investigation – what bearing does it have on the election?

From this point forward most of the interview focuses on Russiagate and the “coup” against President Trump

[05:37] AG Barr here comments on the “bovine silence” of the mainstream media in light of the collapse of the “Russiagate” allegations that were pursued by these media and Democrats for over two years, only to come up with absolutely nothing. A key comment AG Barr makes is that he has been surprised by the lack of concern over civil liberties and the integrity of our government.

[06:36] John Durham’s investigation has been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic…

[07:19] On the idea that Russiagate is the closest thing to a coup d’ etat to happen in the United States since the assassination of President Lincoln, does AG Barr agree? He does.

[07:51] On the question of motives for doing what became Russiagate AG Barr declines to comment, and for the next several minutes there are many questions he declines to answer, but he does give significant information about the strangeness of the pattern that developed, such as 124 leaks from the White House in the first 125 days of President Trump’s term, contrasted with only eight leaks in the same period of time in President Obama’s terms of office.

This interview is full of “I cannot answer that / I don’t want to answer that” to various questions Bartiromo posts, but this is for good reason: Attorney General Barr is involved in the investigation and is likely to compromise it by disclosing these particular pieces of information. However, he does talk about much of what has provoked the need for investigation, and it paints a disturbing picture of a real power struggle taking place in Washington, one that is far from petty in its nature, but which is a seriously organized pushback from very powerful people against the populism and independence from special interests that President Trump brings in to the White House.

[13:20] Regarding John Bolton’s breach of contract by including highly classified material in his upcoming book. AG Barr specifically notes that the President did not ask him to take action concerning John Bolton’s book – this concern is simply part and parcel of the work that the Justice Department must do when the potential of releasing confidential or classified information to the public exists.

[14:55] On China: since the late 19th century, the United States has been the technology leader in the world. China has been pushing hard to supplant the Americans. To that end, they have embarked on a very aggressive program to steal and cheat, taking intellectual property regarding new technologies such as 5G (which Barr notes will be the new standard for worldwide telecommunications) in an effort to dominate this economic sector. This is a competition for the future, and the charge is that China has been competing unfairly. Barr also faults US businesses as being “willing to sacrifice long term viability of their companies for short term profit.” Barr draws a direct line to Nazi Germany, noting that if American businesses had taken the view towards Hitler’s Germany that they do now to China, we would all speaking German today. The fields involved are diverse – not just military, but agriculture, robotics, medicine, artificial intelligence, and such very important technologies.

[19:10] The “Huawei threat” Are there backdoors where data from this company’s infrastructure (Huawei is a major provider of wireless communication equipment, from soup to nuts) could be routed to elements in the Chinese Communist Party? – Barr initially answers bluntly, “yes”, but then qualifies his remark, saying “I would say there is certainly the capacity to do that and a very high risk of that.” The alternative proposal for the US to acquire a minority stake in Ericsson and Nokia to advertise that these networks are “safe” and backed by the United States, rather than owning equipment that could broadcast compromising information back to the Chinese government.

This is an extremely significant comment which deserves special attention in a future piece.

[21:10] Is China using the COVID-19 pandemic to achieve its territorial ambitions, such as claiming sovereignty over the South China Sea? – To this, AG Barr suggests that the primary concern is protecting American technological leadership, and thwarting China’s industrial espionage activity.

Barr goes on to note that the Chinese are a great people with a great history, and that the hope of bringing China into the world economy was that they country would be liberated from Communist rule. This didn’t work out, as the Chinese Communist Party deftly found its way into becoming a true economic powerhouse while giving little quarter to liberalization of human rights.

Overall, the interview is excellent, but it is disturbing to me that in places where absolute truth is needed, AG Barr demurs. For one, the “tragedization” of the death of George Floyd: There is still much that is unknown and contradictory regarding this man and how he ended up dead. The original ME report noted the presence of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his body and much of the videographed incident shows scenes that are consistent with what would happen if the police had to deal with anyone in a severely intoxicated state. Further, such drug use can make people uncontrollably violent. This is something being neatly left out of the narrative about him and in fact, the fact that this is NOT in the narrative is fuel for the riots and demonstrations. On this, I think the whole of the American goverment and media have sold out, including, regrettably, President Donald Trump.

Knowing the desire of most decent Americans to be polite rather than challenge one another and create conflict, this is probably the mechanism at play here, to go along until it is completely proven otherwise. But this is also how Black Lives Matter started in the first place. The dishonest narratives peddled about Ferguson’s Mike Brown, about Travon Martin, now about George Floyd and most recently about Rayshard Brooks, are all dishonest in the same way. Every single one of these men was involved the drug culture and Floyd and Brooks were intoxicated, and this was shown on camera. Brown and Martin embraced the drug culture, thinking of it as the inheritance of the poor persecuted black people, and in so doing simply reinforced their own racism, as well as giving the mass media a tool with which to continue to tarnish and foment prejudice and fear against blacks because of how “uncontrollable” they are in their rage – holding them to a different standard than other people who have to behave and follow the law.

Being nice and dishonest like this is part of the problem. When this happens at the highest levels of our government as well, the result is weakness and hopelessness. Perhaps AG Barr and Trump are playing a longer game, and if so, one hopes for their success, but right now the situation in America looks increasingly grave.