The head of the American justice system now saying publicly that there is no good or bad except what the strongest want.

'My God,' Says US Senator After William Barr Deploys 'History Is Written by the Winners' Trope

"The head of the American justice system now saying publicly that there is no good or bad except what the strongest want," said another critic. "The definition of autocracy."

"My god."

That was the initial two-word reaction of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) late Thursday night after CBS News aired an interview with U.S. Attorney General William Barr who declared that "history is written by the winners" when asked how he thought historians would view the Justice Department's dropping of charges against President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn earlier in the day.

To critics like Murphy, Barr's response was a clear betrayal of the standards that should be upheld by the Justice Department and the American legal system.

"The entire idea of the rule of law—that thing the Attorney General is supposed to be in charge of upholding—is predicated on the outcome of elections NOT mattering when it comes to the operation of the legal system," Murphy said.

After the DOJ's decision to drop charges against Flynn there was no shortage of outrage directed at Barr, with many critics saying it appeared to be a direct effort to help the president politically.

"Barr has consistently acted for the personal and political benefit of President Trump, rather than fulfilling his duty as chief law enforcement officer of the United States," said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Legal experts, meanwhile, said the DOJ maneuvers related to the Flynn case were unprecedented.

"I've been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen anything like this," Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Georgetown University, told the New York Times.

But Barr's deflection of such criticisms—delivered with what the Daily Beastcharacterized as "a sly smile"—during the CBS interview sparked even further alarm.

"The head of the American justice system now saying publicly that there is no good or bad except what the strongest want. The definition of autocracy," tweeted writer and director Adam Stein in response.

Political science professor Robert E. Kelly, who teaches at the Pusan National University in South Korea, said it's "kinda mind-blowing that the US equivalent of the justice minister is embracing might-makes-right historiography. [Isn't] his job literally the opposite?"

In the U.S. meanwhile, journalist and left-leaning columnist Will Bunch suggested it was time to put Barr's theory of history and justice to the test.

"We need to win in November and write the history of how Bill Barr spent the rest of his life in prison," Bunch quipped.

Not that this is anything new if you ask me. Bill Barr is just more open about not caring about rule of law. How come he gets to lead the Justice Department?

The party of the rule of law.

"Rules are for thee, not for me"

I appreciate his honesty.

tbh this thread is going to be an echo-chamber. Barr is a scumbag and so is the rest of the Trump Administration but you will not see any trumpettes coming in this thread.

And if you do, they'll defend them or insult the liberals or whatever. It's getting annoying.

willing to do the work.

While everyone wants to accuse Barr of corruption over the dropping of the charges against General Flynn, there are plenty of other cases of people out there that have been wrongfully charged with crimes and have to plead guilty not because of actual guilt, but because their lawyers convinced them that trying to seek an acquittal would bankrupt them and they would still be found guilty anyway.

Flynn is a retired three-star general, meaning he makes more in retirement pay from his Army pension than many other Americans make doing full-time work. As the former head of DIA and the sitting NSA at the time he resigned, he had access to some of the most highly classified information out there. Despite that, he had to sell his house and he pleads guilty after his son was threatened with prosecution. Blame his white privilege if you want like Omar did if it makes you feel better.

I get that many of you hate Trump, but you have to look at this situation beyond politics. If the FBI was willing to do all of that to take down a retired general officer who was working directly for the President of the United States at the time even after they stated that he didn't collude with Russia (he pled guilty to lying, not collusion), what makes you think they wouldn't do that to any of us?

@ad1x2: There is some legitimacy to your points and I for one am not sure what should or should not have been pursued wrt Flynn. However, that isn't the issue in this thread.

It appears that the point of the thread is to say that Flynn plead guilty and should be going to jail for a long time, and the only reason he isn't is that Barr is corrupt and let him go presumably under secret orders from Trump.

Or, they're taking Barr's statement of "history is written by the winners" as an obvious sign of corruption with the head of the DOJ based on the words of a senator that has a political interest in seeing Trump not get reelected. This is in spite of it being a factual statement whether you believe it to be right or wrong.

Please correct me if you think I am wrong.

Are you saying Flynn should get away with it because of many others are falsely judged?

The thread title is pretty clear. Also, within the article there is additional reference to the legal gymnastics undertaken and the associated statements of rationale.

However, the main point is indeed the history is written by the winners statements. While this is objectively true in many cases, the statement within the context is a direct undercut of the rule of law. The notion that the Attorney General would make such a statement within the context of this, or similar situation, is beyond the pale.

I expect such things in authoritarian gov'ts and banana republics. In any modern functioning 1st world democracy, I would expect the Attorney General to immediately be fired by his/her boss as such a position is entirely antithetical to purpose of the job. And therein lies bare the conundrum.

He’s right, good and evil are relative concepts

Gen. Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI after they threatened to prosecute his son. I’m not going to pretend to know what they had on his son, but we can safely assume that after all Flynn went through defending himself I don’t see him having the money or the patience to continue defending himself and on top of that try to defend his son if the FBI bought charges against him as well.

Apparently, Sen. Murphy said “My God” when AG Barr said “History is written by the winners” but did he say “My God” when written notes came out showing the FBI investigators’ intent to entrap Flynn? Did he say that about the FISA court abuse? Did he say that about FBI agents allegedly altering Flynn’s interview summaries? Did he say that about withheld documentation during Flynn’s legal case that may have gone favorably for him?

As I said, there are many other people out there that have plead guilty in order to end legal proceedings against them or others they cared about rather than to keep fighting a battle they were afraid that they would lose. People less financially fortunate than Flynn probably crumbled a lot faster. People upset about Flynn not going to jail because they feel like another one of Trump's minions is getting away with something don't seem to care about potentially exposed misconduct by the FBI that can be directed at anybody, not just people they disagree with politically.

Interpretation of what Barr meant can be disputed, and we can argue whether it was in reference to history or him being a corrupt official if it makes you feel better.

But what I will say in reference to your banana republic statement is that there were things the FBI did not only in reference to Flynn but to others as well on both sides of the aisle that can fall under the tactics of a banana republic.

We can't sit back and say we're okay with it just because the target is someone we disagree with politically. The FBI did some pretty crappy stuff to get others in their crosshairs such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for example.

I guess justice in America really is dead. Now Trump can get away with shooting people he disagrees with on Fifth Avenue.

As I said, I am open to views on how well the whole Flynn thing has been handled. However an Attorney General making those comments in this context, which is the decision making around an active case, is stunningly bad/incompetent/repulsive/etc.

More than 2,000 years ago, this issue was debated in Plato's Republic between Socrates and the character of Thrasymachus whose position was 'might makes right'. The concepts flowed through the history of Western philosophy and made their way into the political philosophy and ultimately the legal philosophy and structures in place in western democracies.

Your country like mine has at its very heart the rule of law which is traceable back those many years. The position of Attorney General exists for the primary purpose of upholding the rule of law and being the main steward for that within the gov't (separate from the courts).

Talking about what is effectively 'might makes right' within the context of his decision making in this or any case over which his office has control is at the very least utterly stupid and incompetent and if he worked for me I would terminate his employment immediately.

As for the many egregious 'mistakes' the FBI or other entities have made over the years.....those also sucked. Which is why we should learn from them. Which is why we should hold Barr and everyone that follows him to the highest possible standards.

kinda moot anyway. i'm sure trump would have pardoned him.

Pretty appalling coming from the nations top law enforcement official. This is text book termination material. I'm guessing we'll probably get the same usual suspects spinning their heads trying to justify this abhorrent rationale. This administration has been an embarrassment from the start, but the dangerous thing is that it's also eroded civic and constitutional norms. We cannot expect just rule of law if the men leading us are crooks to begin with.

You could just have answered yes.

If I just said yes that would suggest I believe Flynn committed the crime the FBI charged him with and not that they used corrupt tactics to pressure a guilty plea out of him so they could throw him in jail.

@ad1x2: Bullshit. Flynn pled guilty twice. And he had a good lawyer.

You’re right, nobody in the history of this country has ever pled guilty to a crime they didn’t commit because they were told they would lose in court if they did or couldn’t afford to fight the charge...

Surely they must have had a good reason if it lead to him pleading guilty twice... When Flynn is rich and can afford a good lawyer.

You have a low standard for rich, considering that he had to sell his house to pay for his legal defense and still ended up pleading guilty after they threatened to come after his son.

He's guilty. trumpers just don't give a damn...…...

You conveniently forgot something.

LINK The younger Flynn worked closely with his father, whose connections to foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey, have been a subject of federal and congressional investigations.

Michael G. Flynn accompanied his father, for instance, on a trip to Moscow in December 2015 for the elder Flynn to deliver a paid speech at a 10th anniversary celebration for the state-sponsored Russian television network RT. The younger Flynn can be seen in video from an associated event.

Yeah, how dare the justice department do its job.

Whatever guy, pretend that the FBI never resorted to corruption to take down someone, or that they wouldn’t do it to you if you pissed them off.

Provide examples.

That link doesn't disprove the part about them telling Flynn that he either pleads guilty to a crime they believe he didn't commit or they come after his son. If Flynn Jr. was guilty of a crime they should have proven their case rather than threaten his father into pleading guilty.

I’m laughing so hard at ad1x2 comparing Michael Flynn to MLK

I already mentioned MLK earlier in the thread, although they failed to actually charge him with anything. I'll let you decide if it's worth your time to look up other situations in the past, but I'm sure you won't because it will go against your preferred narrative that Flynn is some corrupt ex-general that wanted to help Trump hand the country over to Putin and the best the FBI could prove was that he is a liar.

I had a feeling someone would say that, and it says more about you than me if you were too dense to realize I was comparing them in regards to being targeted by law enforcement and not in terms of their character.

Keep trying:

LINK: Flynn’s current lawyers try to cast this as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct—a gross effort to threaten Flynn with the prosecution of his son combined with an effort to cover it up. In fact, if prosecutors did use Flynn’s son as leverage, this is within the range of normal prosecutorial hardball.Flynn’s consulting group, with which his son was employed, engaged in practices that raised legal questions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, exposing both father and son to potential criminal liability.(And that’s before we get to the reported involvement by both Flynns in a possible plot to kidnap cleric Fethullah Gulen on behalf of the Turkish government.) Prosecutors were apparently willing to forego other charges against Flynn in exchange for his cooperation and plea to the single felony. According to the Covington emails, the prosecutors apparently would not promise to forego further charges against Flynn’s son, although they signaled that they were “unlikely” to move forward against him if they received satisfactory cooperation from his father.

That's one. Can I get two?

The FBI has conducted itself in the highest manner and prosecuted white collar criminals, corrupt politicians, and so on and all stripes. There's no doubt that the FBI or any law enforcement agency is without its flaws, namely racial prejudice and enforcement of questionable laws, but as soon as we discuss those problems, our mod leo and the "rule of law" trumpettes will come in and defend those practices....

...while most likely defending Flynn. :/

All that statement proves is that Flynn was given a choice to either keep trying to defend himself after he already had to resort to selling his house and add on the additional expense of trying to defend his son as well or to simply give up and spend a few months in jail to get it over with while they leave his son out of it. It doesn't prove guilt, just gives accusations about his son.

While I won't pretend to know whether or not Flynn's son is guilty of a crime, I know enough to know that in a court of law, an innocent man can go to jail and a guilty man can walk free depending on whether or not they can afford a good enough lawyer as well as the jury. See Malcolm Alexander as an example of the former and O.J. Simpson as an example of the latter.

Chances are if Flynn had the money he probably would have kept fighting. Flynn may make more money than us but that doesn't mean he can pay DC-area lawyers indefinitely off of his Army pension.

You have already decided on Flynn's guilt most likely based on the fact that he was working for Trump, a person you presumably loathe and think should be sitting in a prison cell, not sitting behind the Resolute Desk. I never said that the FBI is full of corruption, I said that there have been times corruption has happened in an attempt to take certain targets down.

While I could take the time to look for more examples, I'm not going to waste my time because you already made up your mind. If you want to call that a copout rather than me not wanting to waste my time trying to convince someone that doesn't want to be convinced then call it a copout. Just don't try to twist my words and assume I think the FBI as a whole is corrupt, there are a lot of good people that work there but there's going to occasionally be bad people with an alternative agenda.

And what makes you think I would defend racist practices, by the way? I say this as a guy that may support Trump, but also has an uncle (who is black, just like me) that was a victim of police brutality by the NYPD several decades ago. I know that racism may be what motivates some of the corruption, but that doesn't mean they can't target people for political reasons as well.

Chances are..... Flynn changed legal teams around 2018 so yeah... don't think money was the issue. Also, he admitted guilt twice... Him selling a house doesn't excuse the crime he committed.

Also, considering the current DoJ under Barr and how Barr has abused his power and made the DoJ an underling for the Trump Administration rather than an independent function of the government, chances are that Flynn got off scott free and the Trump Administration is subverting justice to protect themselves.

As for your black uncle, if you're supporting Trump, an individual who has made it clear that he supports continuing the cycle of police brutality and questionable practices such as "stop-and-frisk," then why mention the story? It doesn't seem to compute. It's like if I said I support Hitler but don't hate the Jews. No one cares.

How in the **** did we end up here?

You always expect really great change, for positive or for negative, to take time, but in a mere <4 years we went from being really awesome to really terrible.

I don't know, maybe these really are the leaders we deserve *sigh*

LOL, we can't even agree on where we are, nevertheless on how we got here. We've got people in this thread defending this and arguing that it's on the level.

Not sure why you are saying that selling his house doesn't excuse his alleged crimes, selling his house was to help pay legal bills. Eventually, a legal defense fund was set up and his current team is alleging that his old team gave him insufficient representation and was more worried about whether or not he had dirt on Trump than actually defending him.

In regards to Trump forcing the DOJ to drop the charges, why go through that trouble if he knows Flynn is guilty and just pardon him instead while proclaiming that the "swamp" wouldn't give him a fair shot instead? He already did a few controversial pardons since taking office.

I bought up race because you suggested that people like me would be opposed to politically-based police misconduct but are okay with racism-based police misconduct. If you didn't bring it up then I wouldn't have bought it up.

Whatever guy, pretend general's haven't colluded with corrupt presidents before...…….Irangate anyone...……..

Sounds like the Republicans just declared themselves the National Socialist American Workers Party.

Where's the Blues Brothers when you need them.

What article was copy and pasted? I didn't see any links.

Why did the twitter user omit the second half of the quote though?

Interview Transcript

---

In closing, this was a big decision in the Flynn case, to-- to say the least. When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written? What will it say about your decision making?

Well, history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who's writing the history. But I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It helped, it upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.

Uh-huh.

I mean, it's not gonna be the end of it.

What do you mean, it's not the end of it?

Well, I said we're gonna get to the bottom of what happened.

---

It's a very long interview and worth the read if anyone is curious on this thoughts.

@Stevo_the_gamer: so liberals took one line and ran with it, per usual.

Should close the thread. It’s just bait and trolling based on the full interview and context.

Expect nothing less from the same guy who swept away the Iran-Contra scandal.

Barr is a total waste, the only thing he excels in is being a suck-up and a depraved cretin who views any slight against the Republican party as an attack on America in general.

The U.S. becomes even more corrupt :(

@tenaka2: it’s almost like you didn’t real the whole thing and only read headlines.

@Stevo_the_gamer: My bad, source here.

Trump simply showed that US government is just an extended family business.

Cherry picked and narrative driven excerpts are common on both sides of the aisle which is why it's always important to seek out context.