Second, for similar reasons, the reference to “spying” created the impression that Barr was pandering to the president, succumbing to Trump’s relentless pressure to shade the truth (or worse) in service of his own narrow, personal interests. This surely pleases the president, but it undermines Barr’s credibility and corrodes the public’s perception of him as an agent of apolitical justice. Whether those concerns are valid or not, the perception alone is damaging.
Third, although Barr focused on prior FBI leadership, rather than the bureau’s rank and file, Barr’s statements also resonated with prior presidential attacks on the agency and the intelligence community as a whole. A better approach would have been to use more neutral language, to have acknowledged the importance of proper investigation as well as the risk of improper investigation, or to have simply referenced the forthcoming inspector general’s report and left it at that. Barr was certainly correct that law enforcement and intelligence investigation of political campaigns is highly sensitive and a matter of concern; the way he made that important point, however, was the problem.
To be fair, anyone who has testified before Congress — including both of us — must acknowledge the possibility of a slip of the tongue or an inartful articulation in that often-difficult forum. But Barr stuck with “spying” in his Senate hearing, and he is much too smart, experienced in law enforcement and intelligence, and politically sophisticated to have fallen into that vocabulary by accident.
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