One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General

By William P. Barr

William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers, 2022 595 pages, $28

Reviewed by Louis Fisher

Drawing from his experiences as attorney general under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump, William Barr analyzes the mix of law and politics at the national level. He borrows the title of his book from Ed Levi, who served as attorney general under President Gerald Ford. When asked to describe the job of attorney general, Levi did not seek guidance from the Founding Fathers, the rule of law, and the principles of democracy. Instead, he said: “It’s just one damn thing after another.” Are some of the bad things the fault of the office holder? Are there are also good things worth recalling?

In the Prologue, Barr discusses Trump’s claim that he had actually won reelection in 2020, only to be denied victory because of various accusations of voter fraud. Barr learned from Republican members of Congress that if Trump believed he actually won the election without citing reliable evidence, “the country could be headed for a constitutional crisis.” That is what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, with the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Toward the end of the book, Barr analyzes and dismisses the claim that Trump won reelection.

The first chapter covers Barr’s birth in New York City and his education in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After marriage, he decided to relocate to Washington, D.C., to attend law school at night at the George Washington University and work during the day at the CIA. All of that is covered in the first 35 pages. One of his early experiences with the federal government is working with the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. Later, he served as acting attorney general under President George H. W. Bush before being confirmed as attorney general on Nov. 26, 1991.

Barr left the federal government in January 1993 and devoted the next 26 years to the private sector. Initially he returned to his old law firm, Shaw, Pittman, but soon accepted a number of invitations to serve as general counsel in several corporations. He argued many cases, including several before the Supreme Court. After 156 pages, he begins to describe his experience working with President Trump.

Among the many Republican contenders for the presidency in 2016, he preferred Jeb Bush. Barr states that Jeb Bush “failed this time around with Republican voters and dropped out in February.” Once Trump won the nomination at the Republican convention, Barr supported him and “wrote a check the next day.” He considered Trump “capable of charm and humor” but along with others found him “frequently crass, bombastic, and petulant.” Especially grating to Barr was Trump’s “ready resort to pettiness and personal name-calling.” Notwithstanding what Barr considered to be Trump’s shortcomings, he liked “the clear and direct way he staked out a position” and his willingness to state “unpleasant truths that many were thinking but afraid to say.” To Barr, Trump’s “pugnacious style worked.” Barr “had no hesitancy” in backing Trump over Hillary Clinton. As to that choice, Barr said he “would crawl over broken glass to the polls to vote for Trump.”

To Barr, the claim that Trump “governed as an autocrat” and his administration “was lawless and anti-democratic” was “another false narrative.” Entirely false? What about Trump as president taking Department of Defense funds and shifting them to build the wall against the border with Mexico? Nothing lawless and anti-democratic about that? Presidents are at liberty to take funds appropriated by Congress for specific purposes and shift them to purposes desired by the president but not authorized by Congress? Is it acceptable to shift the power of the purse from Congress to the president?

Chapter 9 begins with Barr saying he “had no desire at all to go into the Trump administration.” A very curious statement. Most people who follow politics are aware that on June 8, 2018, Barr, as a private citizen, submitted a 19-page letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel. The letter sharply criticized the report issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, offering this point on page 10 of that letter: “The Constitution itself places no limit on the President’s authority to act on matters which concern him or his own conduct.” No limits? What Nixon did with the Watergate tapes was entirely his business and it was wrong to force him from office? Left unsaid in Barr’s letter was a clear implied message: “Mr. President, if you are unhappy with Attorney General Sessions and need a trusted replacement, keep me in mind.”

When Barr appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee as nominee to be attorney general in the Trump administration, Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., criticized his letter to the Justice Department the previous year (https://www.wsj.com/public/ resources/documents/BarrMueller.pdf?mod=article_inline): “Under his theory, the president is above the law in most respects. That’s stunning. To argue that the president has no check on his authority flies in the face of our constitutional system of checks and balances.”