IT'S A RICO CASE:

"This is a really strange situation with Barr, who has so many conflicts and is up to his eyeballs in all of the corruption surrounding Trump," attorney Nick Akerman told Newsweek. Akerman served an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

The attorney general plays no official role in impeachment, but that hasn't stopped Barr from coming to Trump's defense on multiple occasions. The Justice Department's top official often protected the Trump administration throughout the inquiry and went so far as to suggest that Democrats are "trivializing" impeachment by using it as a "political tool."

Michael J. Stern, a former federal prosecutor, asserted that Barr's loyalty to the White House is a "perversion" of his job as attorney general.

"There is an inherent conflict in Barr's designated role as the chief law enforcement officer of this country and his efforts to protect the man who gave him his job. It is unfortunate that Bill Barr never misses an opportunity to place his thumb on the scales of justice in favor of Donald Trump. That's not how it is supposed to be," Stern told Newsweek. [...]

Akerman argued that Barr is a "major player" in the obstruction case against Trump because he advised the White House not to turn over the whistleblower complaint to Congress. That complaint jump-started the House's impeachment probe, outlining the president's troubling communication with the Ukrainian leader.

Barr was one of several White House officials to be implicated in the whistleblower's complaint. He was also brought by Trump during his July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy. The two leaders agreed that Barr and Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, should work with Ukrainian officials.

"[Barr] should be performing no role here. He has a clear conflict of interest," Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, told Newsweek. Gerhardt testified alongside other legal scholars before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month during the impeachment hearings. He did the same when the House impeached President Bill Clinton.

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