Time was, Attorney General William Barr had to at least go through the motions of pretending his role at the Department of Justice was that of top attorney for the United States and not Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. No one actually believed it, given Barr’s proclivity for telling Congress things like “it’s not a crime” for the president to demand staffers lie to investigators, but a mild effort was put in nevertheless. But now that Senate Republicans have made it clear Trump can effectively do anything he wants and will never, ever be held accountable? Barr has apparently decided to drop the charade and not even try to hide the fact that the Justice Department’s main function is to do Trump’s dirty work. What a weight off his shoulders!

NBC News reports that, at the end of last month, the U.S. attorney presiding over an inconclusive investigation into former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe—who Trump once suggested should be sentenced to death—was abruptly removed from the job “in one of several recent moves by Attorney General William Barr to take control of legal matters of personal interest to [the] president.” Other moves reportedly include senior Justice Department officials intervening last month to change the sentencing recommendation for former national security adviser (and Ivanka Trump hire) Mike Flynn from up to six months in jail to probation. That filing conveniently came on the day that U.S. attorney Jessie Liu, who oversaw the McCabe investigation, was removed from her post and replaced by a former prosecutor selected by Barr. And, of course, there were the events of yesterday, wherein Barr’s DOJ intervened to change the sentencing recommendation of longtime Trump pal Roger Stone from seven to nine years in prison to something more comfortable for all involved. (By the end of the day, all four line prosecutors had resigned from the case, and one quit his job at the Justice Department altogether.)

For anyone wondering if Barr’s actions related to the Stone case—wherein the new filing says the nine-year recommendation “does not accurately reflect the Department of Justice’s position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter”—are totally normal and customary, the answer is apparently a resounding fuck no. “This signals to me that there has been a political infestation,” NBC News legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia, said on MSNBC. “And that is the single most dangerous thing that you can do to the Department of Justice.” As Gregory Brower, a former U.S. attorney for Nevada and senior FBI official, told NBC News, “I’ve never seen this happen, ever. I’d be shocked if the judge didn’t order the U.S. attorney to come into court to explain it.”

Or, said judge could simply refer to the president‘s early-morning tweets, wherein he applauded the Attorney General for dropping the pretense and just going for it (“it” being a completely and totally compromised DOJ that one could see, in the not-too-distant future, prosecuting people for looking at Trump the wrong way):

As one senior administration official put it to the Daily Beast, an acquitted Trump “feels like the chains are off now. It’s like things have taken a turn. The gloves are off. And everything that used to be hush hush is now just...out in the open.”

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