Ryan Goodman

Opinion contributor

One of the most shocking revelations in the transcript of President Donald Trump’s phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky was that so much of what Trump had to say on the call focused just on getting Ukrainian officials to investigate Trump’s political opponents. Another surprise was the fact that President Trump said repeatedly — five times, in fact — that Attorney General William Barr would be running point, working with Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani, on these matters.

Make no mistake, these facts now implicate the attorney general, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, directly in the commission of acts that many of the country’s leading legal experts consider federal crimes — whether as election law violations, bribery or other offenses concerning public corruption.

This doesn't look good for the AG

The revelation of Barr’s possible involvement should alarm all of us concerned about the rule of law in this country. At a minimum, it’s no longer sustainable for this attorney general to oversee the Justice Department’s handling of the Ukraine scandal.

Consider a contrast: One of the most egregious acts revealed in the Mueller report was when the president asked then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ”take (a) look” at investigating Trump’s political rival, Hillary Clinton. Sessions, to his credit, refused. Not to his great credit, though, because the right answer is so obviously to refrain.

Ukraine whistleblower:It's time for all the cards to be laid out for Congress

Even Barr seems to understand the extreme impropriety of what the transcript suggests about his using the power of his office to go after the president’s political rivals. Hence Barr’s formal statement, issued within 30 minutes of the transcript’s release, suggesting that what Trump told Ukraine’s president about the attorney general’s role was essentially false.

But Barr long ago lost the benefit of the doubt. We cannot accept at face value what he says when it comes to the defense of the president or himself.

What’s even more egregious here is to think of the transcript in relation to what else Barr may have been doing in handling the Ukraine matter.

It’s deeply concerning to now know that Barr’s Justice Department told the director of national intelligence to withhold the whistleblower’s complaint from Congress, while Barr admits he knew at the time that he was named on the phone call at the heart of the whistleblower’s allegations. Perhaps that would be excusable if the Justice Department’s advice to the director was ordinary and well within the law. But the DOJ advice was not close to that line. Even Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano has called the DOJ legal theory for withholding the whistleblower’s complaint “cockamamie.”

Pushing aside reports

Layer onto all of these concerns another revelation in Wednesday’s news — according to The New York Times, the director of national intelligence and the inspector general of the intelligence community each referred the whistleblower’s complaint to the Justice Department for a possible criminal investigation into the president’s actions. Within a matter of days, it seems Barr’s Justice Department somehow reached the conclusion that the complaint could not even trigger an investigation because the allegations could not involve a crime. The legal reasoning that has been reported would put the administration “on very thin ice,” as Judge Napolitano might say.

McMullin:If Congress doesn't stand up to Trump on Ukraine, his abuse of power will only escalate

Apparently, Barr’s Justice Department came up with the idea that “the information discussed on the call didn’t amount to a ‘thing of value’ that could be quantified,” according to BuzzFeed News. That logic flies in the face of what the nation’s foremost legal experts, including Trump’s deputy solicitor general, concluded in the Mueller report. In the case of Ukraine, just chalking up all of Giuliani’s out-of-pocket expenses in the hunt for fake dirt on Biden would likely show the immense value that he and Trump placed on the information.

Finally, what makes matters worse for Barr is that the president has twice publicly discussed having the attorney general investigate allegations involving Ukraine, Clinton and Biden. And the attorney general famously tried to avoid answering Sen. Kamala Harris’ simple question whether the White House ever asked him to investigate anyone.

After the release of the Ukrainegate transcript, the cloud over Bill Barr is thick. There’s one way for him to remove it. Step aside.

Ryan Goodman is a professor of law at New York University and editor in chief of the blog Just Security. Follow him on Twitter: @rgoodlaw