Wednesday, July 15, 2020

William Barr, Attorney General of USA

Nadene Goldfoot                                             
US Attorney General since Valentine's Day 2019
has had to face more problems than one can imagine.  
William Barr, born in New York City on May 23, 1950,  our Attorney General of the Department of Justice, has quite a responsible job.  He comes from a highly well-educated family.  He is a lawyer.  His school was at Columbia University, where he majored in government and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1971. He did two additional years of graduate study at Columbia, receiving an Master of Arts in government and Chinese studies in 1973. While at Columbia, Barr opposed anti-Vietnam War occupation protests by students on campus.  
                                                        
Donald Barr b: August 8, 1921

His father, Donald Barr, was a professor of English at Columbia University and writer who wrote 2 science fiction novels,  as well as his mother, Mary Margaret Ahern, who came from an Irish background.  Donald's father was Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism.  I wonder if it didn't happen when he married Mary Margaret, a Catholic, which would have happened in the 40s.    Bill's hobby is playing bagpipes.    Donald's paternal grandparents immigrated from Ukraine* to England before coming to the United States. He grew up in New York City with his sister, Margaret. His father was an economist, and his mother a psychologist. I have a lot of distant cousins from Ukraine as my grandparents were from Lithuania.  We could be sharing genes.  You never know.

"Like his father before him, Donald attended Columbia University in New York. He majored in mathematics and anthropology, and graduated in 1941. He joined the Army, and served with the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, in Washington, D.C. and in Europe. Afterward, he returned to Columbia, where he and his wife both taught in the English department while he earned his master's degree in 1951. Donald continued his studies, completing course requirements for a PhD while teaching. 

                                  

His father was Simon Petham Barr (1892-1948) and mother was Estella De Young (1893-1979).  They were from Berdychiv, a Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth (1569 - 1793) and Russian Empire (1793-1917). I've discovered it is in Ukraine.   Donald's grandfather is listed on the census as coming from Poland, and was Philip Barr. It may take a village to raise a child, but it's interesting how a family can create that child.  That's why our genealogy so
interesting.  What do we carry forth from our ancestors?    

Simon's parents were Philip Barr and Rebecca Palem.                                                           

Their story might have been somewhat like Abie's Irish Rose, an early TV serial.  Donald Barr was an Office of Strategic Services agent. It is an intelligence agency in Washington, DC that was in operation from 1942 to 1945.   President Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of the two founders. That interest was shared by his son, Bill.   

William, or Bill, was born in 1950 in New York City.  He served from 91 to 93 for George H W Bush, and then started his new post for Donald Trump in February 2019.  Before this from 73 to 77 he worked for the C.I.A,( Central Intelligence Agency).  He even worked for a year under Ronald Reagan.  

                                                

He's received criticism for his handling of various challenges, including his mischaracterized summary and selective redaction of the Mueller report, interventions in the guilty convictions and sentences of former Trump advisors Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, and allegations of political interference in the removal of top Manhattan Prosecutor, US attorney Geoffrey Berman, from his Southern District of New York attorney position.
                                                        

"Right away in May 2019  Barr appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to oversee a DOJ probe into the origins of the FBI investigation into Russian interference. The origins of the probe were already being investigated by the Justice Department's inspector general and by U.S. attorney John Huber, who was appointed in 2018 by Jeff Sessions. Democrats criticized the decision, with Sen. Patrick Leahy saying, "Ordering a 3rd meritless investigation at the request of Trump is beneath the office he holds."  Trump ordered the intelligence community to cooperate with Barr's inquiry and granted Barr unprecedented full authority to declassify any intelligence information related to the matter."  That's right.  3 groups of people were investigation Russian Interference in our election of 2016 when Trump won his position.  Nothing came of it.

By " May 18, 2020, Barr commented on prior investigations into potential collusion between Trump and Russia stating: "What happened to the president in the 2016 election and throughout the first two years of his administration was abhorrent...it was a grave injustice and it was unprecedented in American history...the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against this president."

                                                                           
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, b: December 24, 1958 in Rhode Island
child of Irish Catholics
     The Justice Department of which Barr is head of, announced in May 2020 that the charges against Michael  Flynn would be dropped, with Jensen stating that Barr had agreed with his recommendation. Shortly after, Barr was asked in a media interview if given that Flynn "admitted lying to the FBI. Does the fact remain that he lied?" Barr replied that "people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes ... the Department of Justice is not persuaded that this was material to any legitimate counterintelligence investigation. So it was not a crime." Barr denied that he was carrying out the president's agenda on this case, stating that he was "doing the law's bidding". He also said that from this case, he wanted to show Americans that "there's only one standard of justice", instead of two standards of justice.
Michael Thomas Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 24th National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration until his forced resignation who when forced to admit to telling a lie, finally agreed with his  inquisitors.                                                           
Barr threatened to quit if Trump didn't stop  tweeting
about his department
, which makes it impossible for him
to do his job.   
The attorney general is a Cabinet member who can and should advise the president on policy and carry out the president’s policy goals. He is also the highest law enforcement officer in the land, swearing an oath to country, not to party.  It's a very difficult position for Barr to be in.  He's doing both, as I see it.
He's giving advise that Trump doesn't always want to take, but following the law's legal points which Trump doesn't always like, either.  
In April 2019, Barr stirred controversy by saying he thought "spying did occur" against the Trump 2016 presidential campaign. In May 2019, Barr asserted, "Government power was used to spy on American citizens." Boy, if
they are listening into my telephone conversations with girlfriend Jan, they'll get an earful.  We hear odd noises on the phone all the time and wonder if we're being tapped.  Most of the time I do hope they are listening.  They would learn something.   Former FBI Director James Comey,  who was the 7th director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until his dismissal in May 2017.  Comey had been a registered Republican for most of his adult life; in 2016, he described himself as unaffiliated. and rebutted Barr, saying "The FBI doesn't spy. The FBI investigates."  
U.S. Attorney General William Barr discussed a Trump administration executive order on the International Criminal Court during a joint news conference at the State Department in Washington, June 11, 2020. After initially refusing to step aside, Berman said Saturday he was leaving his post upon learning that his deputy would take over on an acting basis, safeguarding the “tradition of integrity and independence” in the district.  New York’s southern district is investigating Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and obtained a conviction of the president’s previous personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for financial crimes. 
Resource: 
updated 9pm 7/15/2020; picture of ggrandfather, comment
timesofisrael.com/us-attorney-general-says-he-might-quit-over-trumps-interventions-source/


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