William Barr AG confirmation and Bush-era pardons

January 01, 2019, 11:57 AM

Pipe Smoker

Everything I read about Barr makes me think that President Trump’s choice for AG is spot on.

“When President George H.W. Bush pardoned six Reagan administration officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1992, he had the blessing of a powerful ally: then-Attorney General William Barr.

Mr. Barr, now President Trump’s pick for attorney general, recommended the pardons of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others, saying later he thought they had been “unjustly treated” by a special counsel who charged them with offenses including lying to Congress.

Mr. Barr’s role in those pardons will be a focal point at his confirmation hearing as soon as next month, congressional aides say. Democrats have promised to press Mr. Barr on his reasoning at the time and on how he would react to potential pardons of Trump aides who have been convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe…”

www.wsj.com/articles/barrs-pus...-hearing-11546002000

January 01, 2019, 01:11 PM

Rey HRH

Color me surprise that he was already attorney general at one time. I figured that would have been the top of his public career and he would go to private practice. But he hung around public service in lesser roles???

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946.

January 01, 2019, 01:17 PM

Sig Sauer Kraut

quote:
Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Color me surprise that he was already attorney general at one time. I figured that would have been the top of his public career and he would go to private practice. But he hung around public service in lesser roles???

No, he went into private practice and now is going back to government service. He didn’t hang around after being attorney general.

January 01, 2019, 01:20 PM

BamaJeepster

quote:
Originally posted by Sig Sauer Kraut:
quote:
Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Color me surprise that he was already attorney general at one time. I figured that would have been the top of his public career and he would go to private practice. But he hung around public service in lesser roles???
No, he went into private practice and now is going back to government service. He didn’t hang around after being attorney general.

Yep.

quote:
After his tenure at the Department of Justice, Barr spent more than 14 years as a senior corporate executive. At the end of 2008 he retired from Verizon Communications, having served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of GTE Corporation from 1994 until that company merged with Bell Atlantic to become Verizon. During his corporate tenure, Barr directed a successful litigation campaign by the local telephone industry to achieve deregulation by scuttling a series of FCC rules, personally arguing several cases in the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court.

In his adopted home state of Virginia, Barr was appointed during 1994 by then-Governor George Allen to co-chair a commission to reform the criminal justice system and abolish parole in the state. He served on the Board of Visitors of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg from 1997 to 2005. He became an independent director of Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) in July 2009.

In 2009, Barr was of counsel to Kirkland & Ellis. He rejoined the firm in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...Barr#Post-DOJ_career