QOTD: William Barr
by digby
“We should be worried about government officials who put their thumbs on the scale.”
He would know:
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, specifically to September 1992, when Attorney General William Barr, top-ranking FBI officials and — believe it or not — a Treasury Department functionary who actually sold “Presidential Bitch” T-shirts with Hillary Clinton’s likeness from her government office, pressured the U.S. attorney in Little Rock to open an investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater investment.
The Arkansas prosecutor was Charles “Chuck” Banks, a Republican appointed by President Reagan, and recently nominated to a federal judgeship by President George H.W. Bush. It was definitely in Banks’ interest to see Bush re-elected.
The problem was that Banks knew all about Madison Guaranty S&L and its screwball proprietor Jim McDougal. His office had unsuccessfully prosecuted the Clintons’ Whitewater partner for bank fraud. He knew perfectly well that McDougal had deceived them about their investment, just as he’d fooled everybody in a frantic fiscal juggling act trying to save his doomed thrift.
The “Presidential Bitch” woman’s analysis showed a shaky grasp of banking law and obvious bias — listing virtually every prominent Democrat in Arkansas as a suspect. So when FBI headquarters in Washington ordered its Little Rock office to proceed on L. Jean Lewis’ criminal referral, Banks decided he had to act. He wrote a stinging letter to superiors in the Department of Justice, refusing to be party to a trumped-up probe clearly intended to affect the presidential election. “Even media questions about such an investigation … he wrote, “all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven.’ “
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