“ ‘Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump, and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.’ ”

That’s former FBI director James Comey unleashing on Attorney General William Barr; his outgoing deputy, Rod Rosenstein; and others in Trump’s orbit who, in Comey’s view, have compromised their ideals to remain in the president’s good graces.

“It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence,” Comey writes in an op-ed for the New York Times published just as Barr’s televised appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee got under way. “In meetings with him, his assertions about what ‘everyone thinks’ and what is ‘obviously true’ wash over you, unchallenged.”