20 Feb If Bill Barr Goes, Consider Louie Gohmert for AG
Speculation mounted this week about a possible rift between President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr arising out the Roger Stone sentencing kerfuffle. While Barr’s DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec threw cold water on rumors that Barr’s resignation was imminent, it’s always wise to have a replacement in mind, just in case things don’t work out. We’ve got a perfect candidate.
Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas would be an ideal replacement for Attorney General Barr, if a parting of the ways between Barr and Trump is on the horizon.
The ruling classes of both parties would object to an AG Gohmert—he’s too principled and fearless. McConnell et.al.’s first instinct might be to treat a Gohmert AG nomination the same way they treated the nomination of John Ratcliffe as Director of National Intelligence—i.e. scuttle it in committee. But the American people seem on the verge of delivering a message of righteous anger to McConnell and Schumer and all the rest that the ruling class protection racket is over. Politicians naturally fear the anger of the people, and they should. AG Gohmert could happen, and America would be very well-served.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Bill Barr is a good man; a seemingly high integrity, quality lawyer. He certainly acts the part of a tough, unintimidated straight shooter. He has given speeches at Notre Dame and at the Federalist Society that demonstrate he has a deep grasp of both America’s historic place in human history and many of the practical implications of its present predicament of starkly polarized politics.
But it’s his openly acknowledged love for the ‘institution’ of the Department of Justice—and concern that it appears to be his view that his job is to protect that institution more than it is to protect America and the rule of law—that sadly generates doubts about whether he is up to the monumental task of his office at this time in American history.
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It is now evident to many Americans that Barack Obama politicized and weaponized the Department of Justice (and just about every other department in the federal government) to a greater degree by far than any other President.
The ‘fast and furious’ scandal—involving gun-running by the United States government to Mexican drug cartels in order to set up a context for blaming ensuing gun violence on American arms manufacturers, all as part of an Obama/leftist effort to weaken and eventually eliminate the Second Amendment rights guaranteed to all Americans—was and is, very simply, diabolical. AG Eric Holder was rightfully cited for contempt of Congress in his blocking of investigation into this scandal, but the scandal itself was buried by the MSM and a Beltway ruling class that decreed that the first black President shall have a free pass to do anything. The Obama DOJ did this, and got away with it.
The “Lois Lerner” IRS scandal—where the IRS plainly targeted and harassed the tea party and other opponents of the leftist Obama administration—was also given a free pass by a compliant MSM and a spineless GOP (and in some cases, a GOP eager to privately applaud the destruction of those ridiculous tea partiers). The Obama DOJ did this, and got away with it.
Fast forward to the 2016 election, and the evidence of a politicized and weaponized DOJ and FBI and CIA is so overwhelming that only a willfully blind leftist cannot or will not see it. The number of culpable government officials is, to borrow a biblical word, legion; the number of culpable officials now in jail is zero. And the buck stops for this result at the office of AG Bill Barr.
The so far minimal public information about the progress of US Attorney John Durham is modestly encouraging in terms of the ultimate goal of delivering justice to a few of those culpable. But while Durham toils away, Barr has openly praised former Deputy and Acting AG Rod Rosenstein, and current FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Rod Rosenstein was in the middle of the plotting and maneuvering to take down Trump; he signed false FISA warrants to keep alive a baseless investigation of the duly elected President of the United States.
Christopher Wray is still in the middle of withholding evidence of FBI wrongdoing, while treating the American public to industrial-scale lying condescension, as he initially (falsely) assured everyone that IG Horowitz found no evidence of bias at the FBI and then floated the absurdity that FISA abuse was a product of a lack of proper training, which he would act to correct. The fraudulent FISA apps were signed by officials at the very top—the ones who do or design the training. Wray’s reaction was brazenly dishonest and insulting to the intelligence of the American people.
Barr’s praise of Rosenstein and Wray could in theory be calculated peace-keeping to keep things running before dropping the hammer. But then just last week, AG Barr’s DOJ also let Andrew McCabe walk despite multiple instances of perjury documented by IG Michael Horowitz. And soon after, in the wake of an obvious act of defiance of AG Barr by Obama DOJ holdovers in the Stone sentencing kerfuffle, AG Barr bizarrely claimed Trump’s tweets—not Obama’s eight years of corruption, and Obama holdovers’ insubordinate behavior—make it impossible for him to do his job.
Taken together, these look much more like the actions of an AG determined to believe in the good of everyone who was hired and came up the ranks of the DOJ/FBI, and to find a way to thread a needle to put almost everyone on the side of earnest, honest public servants who may have made mistakes, rather than culpable, corrupted bureaucrats who have gotten so swept up in the love of Beltway power that they lost their grasp on the basic virtue of honesty.
This needle can’t be threaded; the scope of the corruption is too broad and deep. The sentiment to figuratively burn the DOJ/FBI down and start over has taken hold in America. Such an AG can’t drain the Swamp; he can’t deliver justice that Americans will accept. Americans know what happened; they are just waiting and wondering why AG Barr won’t act on the obvious.
There would be no such wondering with an AG Louie Gohmert. On the initial level of basic qualifications, he’s a former Army Captain, a lawyer, a former trial judge, a former Chief Justice of the 12th Appellate District of Texas. He’s among the most popular elected officials in all of Texas. But that’s not why he’d be a great AG. Have a listen to this recent interview on America, Can We Talk? Mr. Gohmert gets America; his life and faith and values and character are straight out of the American founding. He would not take on the AG role to preserve the institution of the DOJ; he’d take it on to preserve America. And he would know instinctively that a Durham investigation that comes clean with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth would be empowering and renewing for America, not damaging.
Best of all, President Trump already knows and appears to trust Louie Gohmert.
This post does not spring from inside information about Barr or Gohmert, and is not intended to start a rumor. We really hope AG Barr will deliver justice. But the clock is ticking. The scandal he and Durham are investigating is about far more than preserving the DOJ as an institution; it goes right to the core of whether America as a Constitutional republic governed by ‘we the people’ under the rule of law is going to survive. Louie Gohmert already knows this, and has demonstrated the moral and political courage it will take to stand up to the evil—yes, evil—that is working so desperately to shut down full exposure and accountability.
Eric Georgatos