U.S. Attorney General William Barr made some noteworthy remarks to Fox News yesterday. The AG argued that President Donald Trump “did the right thing” to dismiss Intelligence branch Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
“From the vantage point of the Department of Justice, he [IG Atkinson] had interpreted his statute, which is a fairly narrow statute, that gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people and tried to turn it in to a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately reported to Congress without letting the Executive Branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem,” Barr told.
He also provided an update on U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into origins of the FBI’s Russia probe. While stressing his “primary focus isn’t to prepare a report. He is looking to bring people to justice who are engaged in abuses if he can show that they were criminal violations, and that’s what the focus is on.”
Barr stated, “My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”
“Without any basis, they started this investigation of his [Trump’s] campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign,” he continued. “[There was] a whole pattern of events while he was president … to sabotage the presidency … or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”
Plus AG Barr added the Chinese government is engaged in a “full-court blitzkrieg” against the United States. Host Laura Ingraham expressed in that regard, “A lot of that data is being withheld still from the United States, and top medical people are saying that. What about the Justice Department getting involved more, I guess obviously, to the American people in this battle against the ongoing propaganda machine of China in the United States at our universities, in businesses – hey, in the White House Press Room the other day.”
As he declared, “Yes. The Department is heavily engaged in that, in fact that’s one of our highest priorities in the counter intelligence realm, counter espionage realm, and protection of trade secrets as our activity’s directed to defend against the Chinese.”
In addition, “The Chinese are engaged in a full-court blitzkrieg of stealing American technology, trying to influence our political system, trying to steal secrets at our research universities and so forth. And we are focused on it. We have something we call the China Initiative. We’ve brought a lot of indictments, but it’s something that we also have to expose by letting the business community understand exactly the nature of the threat.”
Host Laura Ingraham later questioned, “Given what you know today about the panoply of abuses internationally against the United States, who’s the bigger threat to America’s election security – Russia, or China?”
Barr then replied, “In my opinion it’s China. [And] not just to the election process, but I think across the board there’s simply no comparison. China is a very serious threat to the United States geopolitically, economically, militarily, and a threat to the integrity of our institutions given their ability to influence things.”
A great deal for people to digest. What should be taken from this conversation?
