The Atlantic

Failure Is a Contagion

The blunders of the president and his ideological attorney general are destroying any illusion of control.
Source: Win McNamee / Getty

By the time Attorney General William Barr tried to fire Geoffrey Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, over the weekend, the Department of Justice had become an extension of the financial and political interests of President Donald Trump. No act of politicization was too blatant for the country’s top law-enforcement officer. In a little more than a year in office, Barr has used his authority to protect Trump from two investigations: that of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and then the House impeachment inquiry. He hatched his own investigation to discredit the first, personally traveling abroad to dig up evidence of a United States government conspiracy against the president. He intervened in prosecutions to try to keep the heat on a perceived Trump enemy, the former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; reduce the prison sentence of

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