Andrew Cohen: “There’s no great mystery about what Attorney General William Barr did Wednesday during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He knows that Senate Democrats don’t have the votes or the power to do anything substantial to impair his tragic choice to protect President Trump from the substantiated allegations against him. And so the nation’s chief law enforcement official and top prosecutor, at taxpayer expense, spent hours spinning like a defense attorney with his client’s liberty on the line. If every prosecutor was so keen to forgive and forget compelling evidence of criminal conduct the nation’s prisons would be empty.”

“It was as disgraceful a performance by an attorney general as I have seen in 22 years as a legal analyst and commentator. And I say that having extensively covered the hapless appearances of Alberto Gonzales. He was the attorney general at the heart of the Bush administration’s U.S. Attorney scandal a decade ago. At least he had the excuse of being as dumb as a rock. Barr is no dummy. He knows precisely what he’s doing. His audience is an audience of one. It always has been. And he made it clear Wednesday, as if it had not been before, that he is no honest broker for the Justice Department. He’s just another hack.”

First Read: “If Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton was a 3.0 on the political Richter scale, then special counsel Robert Mueller’s complaint about Trump Attorney General William Barr’s summary of his report on Russian interference is an 8.5. At least.”

“And guess what: Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at 10:00 am ET.”

“Democrats have a decision to make: Do they focus their fire on Barr, with some Democrats and 2020ers calling for the attorney general’s impeachment? Or do they keep the impeachment focus on Trump? Or all of the above?”

William Barr said in a 1998 interview that he was “disturbed” that Attorney General Janet Reno had not defended independent counsel Ken Starr from “spin control,” “hatchet jobs” and “ad hominem attacks,” CNN reports.

“Two decades later, Barr is now attorney general himself — and defending another president who has repeatedly blasted a special counsel’s investigation of his activities. Barr stayed silent as President Donald Trump railed against special counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘witch hunt.'”

Just Security: “On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the ‘Black Friday’ market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in ‘unusual secrecy’ and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.”

“Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that ‘summarizes the principal conclusions.’ Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would ‘summarize the principal conclusions’ of the special counsel’s report for the public.”

“When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was ‘particularly egregious.’ Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.”

“When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr’s summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion’s principal conclusions.”

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t trust Attorney General William Barr, and she suggests his congressional testimony Wednesday undermines his independence as the nation’s top law enforcement officer,” the AP reports.

She added that she’s “very concerned” about Barr’s handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report.

The U.S. Senate voted to confirm William Barr as attorney general, “putting him in command of the Justice Department at one of the most politically charged moments in its history,” the Washington Post reports.

“Once Barr is sworn in, he will be thrust into supervising the special counsel probe into whether President Trump’s campaign worked with Russia to swing the 2016 election — and will be saddled with the political baggage that comes with it.”

“Barr, who has said he considers Mueller a friend, will oversee the probe at a particularly sensitive time, as it is widely presumed that Mueller is nearing the end of his work and lawmakers and the public are growing eager to learn his conclusions.”