A Republican president faces a very tough re-election fight. To that end, his Republican attorney general seeks to find damaging information on his political rival. The AG pressures a local U.S. Attorney to join in the effort. Being possessed of more integrity in his left thumb than the AG has in his own body, the U.S. Attorney tells the AG to pound sand. The effort fails. The president loses. And the U.S. Attorney ultimately finds his career at an end.

Interesting scenario, no? Well, longtime shebeen regular and friend o' the blog Gene Lyons reminded us of this episode back in July of 2016, when James Comey first banjaxed that year's presidential election as regards Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. Here is part of what Lyons wrote:



Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, specifically to September 1992, when Attorney General [Name Redacted For Dramatic Purposes], top-ranking FBI officials and — believe it or not — a Treasury Department functionary who actually sold “Presidential Bitch” T-shirts with Hillary Clinton’s likeness from her government office, pressured the U.S. attorney in Little Rock to open an investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater investment. The Arkansas prosecutor was Charles “Chuck” Banks, a Republican appointed by President Reagan, and recently nominated to a federal judgeship by President George H.W. Bush. It was definitely in Banks’ interest to see Bush re-elected.



The problem was that Banks knew all about Madison Guaranty S&L and its screwball proprietor Jim McDougal. His office had unsuccessfully prosecuted the Clintons’ Whitewater partner for bank fraud. He knew perfectly well that McDougal had deceived them about their investment, just as he’d fooled everybody in a frantic fiscal juggling act trying to save his doomed thrift.

William Barr has always known his role. Dirck Halstead Getty Images

The “Presidential Bitch” woman’s analysis showed a shaky grasp of banking law and obvious bias — listing virtually every prominent Democrat in Arkansas as a suspect. So when FBI headquarters in Washington ordered its Little Rock office to proceed on L. Jean Lewis’ criminal referral, Banks decided he had to act. He wrote a stinging letter to superiors in the Department of Justice, refusing to be party to a trumped-up probe clearly intended to affect the presidential election. “Even media questions about such an investigation … he wrote, “all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven.’ “ That was the end of the Bush administration’s attempt to win the 1992 election with a fake scandal. Also the end of Chuck Banks’ political career.



That attorney general was—dramatic sting music—William Barr. So, when people tell you that Barr is somehow tossing away his reputation by serving as a White House lawn ornament, remember that he never had much of one in the first place. Remember also that he cut his teeth running the very political end of some very political investigations. He was a weapon in the first real weaponization of the DOJ since John Mitchell was running it. Going around. Coming around. All of that.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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