In this column, Due Diligence, erstwhile attorney and GQ staff writer Jay Willis untangles the messy intersection of law, politics, and culture.

During a now-infamous July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump paired his request that Ukraine open an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden with a very specific recommendation: that Zelensky get in touch with attorney general William Barr, too. "Whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great," Trump said, according to the White House's notes of the conversation. He wrapped up the conversation by promising to have Barr call Zelensky soon. "We will get to the bottom of it," he said. "I'm sure you will figure it out."

For the whistleblower who filed a complaint about the call—a complaint that just launched the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history—the invocation of the nation's chief law enforcement officer was an alarming development. "Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well," they wrote.

It isn't clear whether Trump actually looped Barr into this effort to coordinate with a foreign head of state on a clandestine probe of his political rival, and the Department of Justice has flatly denied Barr's knowledge or involvement. But the whistleblower's report alleged that this was not the first time White House lawyers concealed politically sensitive records of Trump's conversations, and lawyers in Barr's Justice Department stymied efforts to transmit that report to Congress. Once again, Barr finds himself involved in a presidential cover-up—or now, as Nancy Pelosi put it, the "cover-up of a cover-up," too.

Trump has long prized unquestioning personal loyalty in his attorneys general. When he learned that his first attorney general, longtime Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, planned to recuse himself from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, an irate Trump complained that he needed someone who would "protect" him, not stand down in his hour of need. Barr, who served as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration and was re-confirmed to the position in February, has ably filled that role ever since: a man who sees the job as less about enforcing the law than about shielding the president from the consequences of breaking it.

The Ukraine matter is far from the first time that Barr has worked to conceal wrongdoing within the executive branch. Nearly three decades ago, he encouraged his then-boss to pardon six key figures in the Iran-Contra affair. This controversial move brought the most significant scandal in the Reagan administration, in which Bush served as vice president, to a quiet, clean end. The independent counsel in that matter, Lawrence Walsh, was irate; he complained that Bush had gummed up the investigation by withholding evidence, making misleading statements about his knowledge of the scandal, and refusing to be interviewed by prosecutors. By pardoning those already implicated, the president effectively foreclosed the possibility that the investigation would one day reach him. Upon hearing the news, Walsh publicly accused Bush of complicity in a "cover-up."

Under Trump, he quickly burnished his reputation as a presidential power absolutist. Barr auditioned for the role by circulating an unsolicited memo in D.C. legal circles in which he argued that special counsel Robert Mueller's then-ongoing obstruction inquiry was "fatally misconceived." While still a private citizen, Barr egged on Trump's efforts to politicize the investigation, publicly criticizing Mueller for having insufficient partisan "balance" on his team of lawyers. In a Washington Post op-ed, Barr hailed Trump's decision to fire former FBI director James Comey, a major focus of Mueller's obstruction probe, as the right choice. During his confirmation hearings, Barr declined to recuse himself from the Russia investigation on the basis of these statements. Even though he was named in the Ukraine whistleblower complaint, he has not recused himself from that matter, either.