Thread by @twoodiac

Whitehouse thinks that DOJ should reach a decision about whether Trump obstructed justice. The problem is that Barr left a shit pile behind him in the department that might have to be cleaned up (and cleared out) before DOJ can be expected to render a credible opinion. 1/13

https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1397576811073130498

We need to know first the details about how Barr operated to get the answer to the hypothetical he wanted in order to “land the plane.”

Everything we can discern about the process tells us that it was highly irregular--enough so that it might have violated ethical rules. 2/13

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is a straight shooter and he has even signaled to Congress that he would love to investigate Barr. So what Whitehouse and the Senate Judiciary should do is to first ask Horowitz to 3/13

Investigate how Section II was created and whether the procedures were so irregular and outré given standard practice in the Dept that it should simply be dismissed and discredited as a precedent. 4/13

(As I have pointed out in previous posts, even Barr couldn’t pretend that Section II had standing as a proper legal opinion, but if it isn’t that, what exactly is its legal status?) 5/13

Horowitz’s report to the Senate Judiciary Committee would then entitle Biden to fire Asst AG / OLC Steven Engel and others as needed, so that Garland could then proceed with reorganizing the DOJ. 6/13

After that necessary preliminary work has been done, Congress could then ask Garland to have the Department render a *real,* proper, bonafide legal opinion. 7/13

(To avoid bad optics if nothing else, Garland couldn’t solo this; he would need good attorneys to submit the report to him, which he would then release. Garland certainly couldn’t hand the job over to OLC Steven Engel & Co.! Engel should have been fired a *long* time ago.) 8/13

Even without having seen it, we know that Section II is hogwash, because Barr appealed to it when he flagrantly lied about the Mueller Report. 9/13

(Recall that 80% of the faculty at his alma mater thought Barr should resign over his handling of the Report. Other legal scholars were so outraged that they have urged that he be disbarred from the legal profession.) 10/13 tinyurl.com/ydhkpoaj

Although it is hogwash, Section II and the highly irregular and quite possibly unethical process that produced it should probably be discredited and gotten out of the way before DOJ proceeds to render a legal opinion on the question. 11/13

Garland is smart, and the foregoing considerations might have been behind his efforts to keep Section II sealed, at least for now, as the waters in the Dept are murky (thanks to Barr). 12/13

Section II will be unsealed sooner or later, but it might be a mistake to do it prematurely.

It might be better for Section II to have been discredited, which it surely deserves--ideally by IG Horowitz--*before* we see it. That’s politics. 13/13

Another possibility is that either Amy Berman Jackson or Garland could unseal Section II, and when legal scholars see just how bad it is, Engel and other culprits can be removed from their positions or fired, IG Horowitz can get to work to help Garland clean up the mess, PS/1

and the Department could then proceed with producing a credible, bona fide legal opinion. That concurrent sequencing would certainly be faster, but maybe not as good politically or optically. PS/2

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