2019’s Adult of the Year Attorney General William Barr has kept his promises and his independence. By Kimberley A. Strassel
https://www.wsj.com/articles/2019s-adult-of-the-year-11578009044?emailToken=
Person-of-the-year awards are almost always bestowed on men and women who already meet with fawning praise. Let’s instead craft an award based on a person’s willingness to speak truth to power—whether to the press, the boss, or to partisan operators. Call it Adult of the Year. The winner: Attorney General William Barr.
President Trump nominated Mr. Barr in December 2018, and for a moment he received the respect he deserves. The press had grown accustomed to demeaning all Trump nominees, but was stymied by Mr. Barr’s impressive career and bipartisan legal support. A Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency veteran, he served as attorney general from 1990-91 with distinction. Media outlets had to acknowledge his “pedigree,” and CNN even quoted an unnamed Justice Department lawyer who had been “nervous” about a Trump pick but pronounced Mr. Barr “a great choice” because “he’s tough he’s principled and he’s independent.”
Mr. Barr remains all those things. He has been vilified precisely because he has maintained an impartial view of the Justice Department and has kept his promises. The great hope—and demand—of the Russia-collusion crowd was that Mr. Barr—as a longtime man of the institution—would circle the department’s wagons. His refusal to do so has made him a threat.
And so commenced one of the more obvious, not to mention nasty, delegitimization campaigns in modern Beltway history. Journalists and Democrats accused him of manipulating the rollout of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in March. They pounced on his decision in May to name U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into the 2016 Trump campaign, accusing both of engaging in “conspiracy theories.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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