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In a speech delivered to a group of conservative lawyers, Attorney General William Barr accused Democrats of a “no-holds-barred war” that is “using every tool and maneuver to sabotage” the Trump administration.
In a powerful speech before the Federalist Society’s convention in Washington, D.C., Barr told the group of conservative attorneys that Democrats were adopting both “dangerous” and “incendiary” language to imply the Trump administration is illegitimate.
“This is a very dangerous and indeed incendiary notion to import into the politics of a Democratic republic,” Barr told the audience. “The fact is, that, yes, while the president has certainly thrown out the traditional beltway playbook and punctilio, he was upfront about what he was going to do and the people decided that he was going to serve as president.”
Barr accused Democrats of trying to thwart the presidency of Donald Trump since the very beginning. Barr said that Democrats are “using every tool and maneuver to sabotage” the administration.
“In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war of Resistance against this administration,” Barr said, “It is the Left that is engaged in a systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law.”
Barr said that the currently Democrat-led Congress is making overly burdensome demands. The excessive call for documents, Barr alleges, is beyond that of simply exercising oversight, rather, it is intended to “incapacitate” the administration.
“I don’t deny that Congress has some implied authority,” Barr said, “but the sheer volume of what we see today in the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations through an avalanche of subpoenas is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch and indeed is touted as such.”
Barr described what he called years of “encroachment” on the powers of the executive branch of government by both the legislative and judicial branches.
Barr said there is a “knee-jerk tendency [among Democrats and the media] to see the legislative and judicial branches as the good guys, protecting the people from a rapacious, would-be autocrat.”
Barr is not alone, as others in conservative legal circles are in favor of what’s called the “unitary executive” theory, where there are fewer restraints upon a president’s exercise of executive power.
