NYT: Bill Barr Tells Prosecutors To Consider Charging Protesters With Sedition

By Susie Madrak — September 17, 2020

Mika Brzezinski covered the latest outrage from Bill Barr, Trump's AG and fixer. According to the New York Times, he attacked his own prosecutors and claimed the right to be the final word on federal cases. Prosecutors, of course, do not take an oath to the executive branch. They swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.

BARR: Name one successful organization or institution where the lowest level employees' decisions are deemed sacrosanct. There aren't any. Letting the most junior members set the agenda may be good for a Montessori pre-school, but it's no way to run a federal agency. Good leaders at the Department of Justice, as any organization, need to trust and support their subordinates, but that does not mean blindly deferring to whatever those subordinates want to do.

"And the New York Times reports that Bill Barr recommended charging some of those arrested in violent demonstrations with sedition," Brzezinski said.

"According to sources who were on the call, Barr warned that violence in some demonstrations could worsen as the election approaches. The Wall Street Journal underscores the priority Mr. Barr has given to prosecuting crimes of violence leading to major property damage as President Trump has made a broader crackdown on the violence and property destruction a key campaign issue.

"Barr even raised the issue of examining whether Seattle's mayor could be charged for allowing a weeks' long autonomous protest zone in her city. Mike Barnicle, Joe tweeted this: 'Barr considers jailing Seattle's mayor for sedition after Trump attacks him on Twitter. Be prepared for the most dangerous attorney general in American history to be the tool Trump uses to illegally upend election results.' What's your take?"

"My take is, the FBI has a list of the most dangerous elements in this country, and at the top of the list are white supremacist organizations and neo-Nazi organizations and organizations like the Boogaloo boys, who are out in cities around America," Barnicle said.

"You never hear Bill Barr talking about them, you never hear Bill Barr talking about charging them with sedition. You hear Bill Barr involving himself in politics. You know, Mika, these two stories that we've covered since the top of the hour, Donald Trump versus Dr. Redfield and Bill Barr backing up Donald Trump and attacking career employees in the Department of Justice, deserve to be joined together and played over and over and over again.

"Because if you do a forensic autopsy of the failures of this administration with regard to covid-19, its handling of it, it's all encompassed right here in the last 10 or 12 minutes that we just saw or listened to. It is horrendous. We are approaching 200,000 deaths from covid-19 in this country. There is going to be no wall with the names of the casualties, the victims, the killed in action victims to covid-19. There's going to be no wall for them. Yellow ribbons at the end of the driveway on your mailbox aren't going to cut it.

"This is a complete breakdown and failure in incompetence and immorality, I would submit, of this administration and people like Donald Trump's enablers -- in person, just now, Bill Barr, the attorney general of the United States."