Senator Doug Jones of Alabama Says He’s Perplexed, Appalled By Trump and Attorney General William Barr –

By Glynn Wilson –

Donald J. Trump is far from the first American president to manipulate the justice system for partisan political purposes. But like everything else Trump does, his abuses of power are just far bigger and badder than anyone who has ever come along before.

If he heard me say that and responded on Twitter, I’m sure he would be very proud of the fact.

But when I asked U.S. Senator Doug Jones in a press conference call on Thursday if he could try to explain what’s wrong with it to the people of Alabama, he said he was “perplexed.”

“I don’t understand it myself,” he said. “I have for a long time been dedicated to the Department of Justice. I served there as an assistant U.S. attorney, as U.S. attorney. When you do that you have a special relationship with the Department of Justice regardless of the administration. Quite frankly I have been perplexed and appalled at what I have seen happen in the last few days.”

It started last last week with the retribution against “military heroes” like Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, he said, “who was essentially perp walked out of the White House for simply responding to a subpoena and telling the truth.”

Now we see the president has injected himself into high profile cases that involve his friends, the Alabama Democrat said.

“He’s criticizing the department … the judge. All of a sudden the department decided to change their tune,” he said. “I think that is not boding well for the American people. The president of the United States should not get involved in such activities. (He) should stay out of criminal cases, especially when it involves friends and people that were close to him.”

“I’m concerned,” he added. “I think the pillars of the Justice Department are eroding rapidly.”

When I asked why he thinks Attorney General William Barr is going along with Trump, Jones said it’s unfortunate.

“It seems to me that what we’re seeing now is (Barr is) protecting the president and doing his bidding as opposed to doing the job of the American people,” Jones said.

Since Watergate, he added, the department was re-established and dedicated to remain independent of politics, “working for the people.”

“The name means something,” he said. “It appears now that what they are trying to do is just simply be the personal representative of the president … and do his bidding, and that is not the role of the Department of Justice. That’s not what all those wonderful people that work at the department, that labor in the fields every day and have been doing so across administrations, signed up for.”

For decades after Watergate, the White House treated the Justice Department with “the softest of gloves,” according to the New York Times editorial board in a scathing criticism of this president’s interference in the cause of true justice, “fearful that any appearance of political interference would resurrect the specter of Attorney General John Mitchell helping President Richard M. Nixon carry out a criminal conspiracy for political ends.”

In fact, describing his first stint as attorney general under President George Bush in an oral history, Barr spoke of the department’s protected status in the post-Watergate era.

“You didn’t mess around with it, didn’t intervene, you didn’t interfere,” he recalled.

What has changed now that Barr is attorney general again under Trump in 2020?

“President Trump’s ground-shaking conduct has demolished those once-sacrosanct guardrails,” according to the Times.

Barr’s intervention to reduce a prison sentence for the president’s convicted friend and fixer Roger Stone led all four career prosecutors handling the case to quit in protest.

“I hope we don’t see too many more resignations,” Senator Jones said. “What I hope they will do is stick it out, and bring it to the attention of folks when necessary.”

Justice Politicized Before

This is not the first time Jones has been vocal in a political prosecution case. Back in 2007, he testified in a House Judiciary Committee Investigation into the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, when the Democrat was jailed to prevent him from ruining the Republican party’s plans for a complete partisan takeover of all three branches of the state government.

I covered that story for The Nation magazine: A Whistleblower’s Tale, and The Locust Fork News-Journal, an independent news website I founded in 2005.

“There is no question in my mind that the Department of Justice in Washington was behind the investigation,” Jones said, adding, in response to questions from committee members, “there is no question” there were people in the Justice Department who were “out to get Siegelman.”

“I’m no fan of (Karl) Rove. I think he is a disgusting political animal,” Jones said in an earlier interview. “I don’t like the way he has interfered, and I do think his fingerprints are on a lot of the prosecutions that have gone on around the country. No question about that. Congress ought to investigate that, because it’s wrong.

“Once you become Attorney General you are supposed to leave the partisan politics at the door,” he continued. “It does not appear that this Justice Department has done that, whether it’s with Siegelman or some of the other cases around the country.”

Readers should also be aware that my investigative work was quoted and cited properly in a book investigating the political manipulation of justice back in the mid-1990s. Former New York Times reporter David Burnham found out about my investigation into corruption by former Republican Governor Guy Hunt, only published in six twice-weekly newspapers on the Alabama Gulf Coast back then.

Burnham used that case as an example of how white Republicans were let off the hook by Republican administrations, while pushing investigations into African American politicians, like former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington. It was one of the central examples in a book that was equally critical of presidents and attorney’s general from both parties, from democrats Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton to republicans Nixon, Reagan and the first Bush.

I wrote a review of that book when it came out for the Macon (Georgia) Telegraph. You can still read it here. The book is still in libraries, including Gorgas Library at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice

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Just after this story went up, Barr did an interview with ABC News in which he appeared to deliver an extraordinary rebuke of President Trump, according to the New York Times and other news outlets.

“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” Barr said. “And I said, whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial board, or the president, I’m going to do what I think is right. I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”

Barr said on Thursday that Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department had made it “impossible for me to do my job” and asserted that “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody.”

Barr has been among the president’s most loyal allies and denigrated by Democrats as nothing more than his personal lawyer but publicly challenged Trump in a way that no other sitting cabinet member has. His remarks seemed aimed at containing the fallout from the department’s botched handling of its sentencing recommendation for Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone, who was convicted of seven felonies in a bid to obstruct a congressional investigation that threatened the president.

Trump’s criticisms “make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity,” Barr said. “It’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”

People close to the president said they were caught off guard by the interview.

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