It was a stunning display that capped off a head spinning four months at the Department of Justice. Sitting before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, two current federal prosecutors, Aaron Zelinsky and John Elias, claimed under oath that on Attorney General William Barr’s watch the department had effectively become a tool to advance the political and personal interests of Donald Trump and his administration. “It’s remarkable for a sitting career assistant U.S. attorney not only to assess that their work has been politically corrupted and that they must withdraw from a case or even resign from the department,” David Laufman, a former Justice Department official, told me. “But to take the extraordinary step of serving as a whistleblower and provide testimony to Congress about the wrong doing they’re seeing at the Justice Department.”
Under oath, Zelinsky described a pressure campaign from the highest levels of the DOJ to curtail the sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a veteran of the Trump administration and longtime ally of the president who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering. “In the United States of America, we do not prosecute people based on politics, and we don’t cut them a break based on politics,” Zelinsky, who worked on Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s team and is currently serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, told the committee. “But that wasn’t what happened here. Roger Stone was treated differently because of politics.”
Elias struck a similar theme, testifying that Barr’s personal biases influenced antitrust investigations. Specifically, Elias alleged an abuse of power in probes into the marijuana industry and an agreement between the state of California and four automakers at the behest of the attorney general. “Personal dislike of an industry is not a valid basis upon which to ground an antitrust investigation,” Elias asserted.
The testimony of Elias and Zelinsky had the effect of completing the legal portrait of Barr—a person for whom there is no essential difference between belief in a strong executive and personally serving Donald Trump. It’s breathtaking in its completeness. There’s no bulwark against corruption—seemingly in Barr’s theory, the executive branch, of which the Department of Justice is a part, can take what it wants.
When Trump tapped Barr to lead the Justice Department, the pick drew praise from some, though he was viewed with skepticism from others. Having previously served as attorney general under George W. Bush, Barr was painted as an institutionalist who would hold his ground against Trump and restore the reputation of the department, tarnished under his predecessor Jeff Sessions. While there was widespread acknowledgment that Barr held an expansive view of executive power, few predicted his evolution into one of the president’s top defenders and loyalists. But it would be more apt to describe Barr as an opportunist who found in Donald Trump the perfect vehicle to empower the executive branch than a Trumpian lackey—even if in practice the outcomes might seem indistinguishable. Barr’s ideology just so happens to match Trump’s politics.
Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement that Zelinsky “did not have any discussion with the Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney, or any other member of political leadership at the Department about the sentencing” and his testimony was “based on his own interpretation of events and hearsay (at best), not firsthand knowledge.” The Office of Professional Responsibility did look into the antitrust division’s probes of the marijuana company mergers and found no wrongdoing.
Barr set the tone for an unexpected Trumpian tenure in his handling of the Mueller report last year, when he chose to release a four-page letter effectively absolving the president and his campaign of wrongdoing. To many, the Mueller report moment marks when Barr crossed the Rubicon. The letter drew a rebuke from Mueller and his team. At the time, Barr was cast as doing Trump’s bidding and whitewashing the Russia investigation. But in hindsight, his motives appear more insidious. His message wasn’t that Trump didn’t obstruct justice, but a president can’t obstruct justice.