If Americans believe the U.S. Department of Justice is creating a two-tier justice system in the United States, “the proper remedy is to vote people out of office, including the president,” said former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr to The Federalist Saturday.
Asked what he did as U.S. attorney general to remedy the politicized use of the U.S. Department of Justice, Barr responded he had pressure from both the left and right to weaponize that department for political ends, and “the response to that isn’t tit-for-tat, the way out of this is to ensure one standard is used for everybody.” Barr said Donald Trump supporters expressed unhappiness that he didn’t move faster to bring Democrats to trial such as in the Russia collusion hoax, but “I wasn’t willing to do that without substantial proof that the law had been breached.”
“That’s what I tried to do — use one standard equally for both sides,” Barr said.
If Americans believe, for example, the White House pressured the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate parents unhappy with their school boards and unequally applied justice to rioters on the right as compared to rioters on the left, the “American Framers believed the check on that is political,” Barr told The Federalist. That means electing a president whose attorney general will not preside over a corrupt and unequal administration of justice, he said, as well as more impartial local district attorneys and prosecutors.
When reminded that means at least another two years of watching the U.S. Justice Department under Biden use its powers to prosecute Americans based on their political beliefs instead of the law, Barr nodded and replied, “That’s how the system works.”
Another check on the unequal administration of justice is the courts, Barr said, whose responsibility is to reject cases that are brought on political rather than legal grounds.
Barr spoke to The Federalist in Chicago, Ill. after giving a speech to a packed Christian conference hosted by the Issues, Etc. radio program. His talk reprised and extended his remarks at Notre Dame University in 2019, in which he argued that U.S. public schools’ systematic indoctrination of children against their families’ religious beliefs amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of religion and requires the remedy of full school choice.
During his speech, Barr noted he rarely read or watched corporate media while serving as U.S. attorney general because allowing himself to be influenced by their pressure “would prevent me from making the decisions that I felt to be right.”
Barr also spoke to The Federalist about the U.S. Supreme Court’s revocation of Roe v. Wade in its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization issued Friday. He said the decision returns abortion to the voters of the states and that the states should therefore now assume the responsibility to legislate on the issue rather than leaving it to Congress.
Barr also condemned Congress taking onto itself prosecutorial powers in instances such as the Jan. 6 Commission as a violation of the American founders’ design for separation of powers between branches of government. He said the prosecutorial function is not a job for Congress, but of the executive branch, and that “oversight that’s too intrusive becomes Congress enacting a prosecutorial function.”
After his morning talk and a lunch, Barr, a practicing Roman Catholic, joined the sold-out audience largely stocked with confessional Lutherans in a vibrant hymn-sing inside the chapel of Concordia University-Chicago.
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