Bill Barr is the Roy Cohn of John Mitchells

This useful summary of UkraineTeapotDome explains what Trump thinks about Bill Barr:

When the CIA operative filed an official complaint about the scheme, the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community deemed it credible, but the acting director of national intelligence didn’t send it to Congress, and the Department of Justice quashed a referral for a criminal investigation. Attorney General William Barr did not recuse himself, even though Barr himself is implicated. (On the second Zelensky call, Trump promises to put Barr on the Biden case, reflecting once again his faith in his AG’s subservience and total lack of professional ethics.)

In this week’s episode of Better Call Barr, he is shocked AND dismayed to hear such a thing:

When Barr did learn of that call a few weeks later, he was “surprised and angry” to discover he had been lumped in with Giuliani, a person familiar with Barr’s thinking told The Associated Press. This person was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, often appears in rambling television interviews as a vocal defender of the president. Giuliani represents Trump’s personal interests and holds no position in the U.S. government, raising questions about why he would be conducting outreach to Ukrainian officials.

Barr is the nation’s top law enforcement officer and leads a Cabinet department that traditionally has a modicum of independence from the White House.

Yet to Trump, there often appears to be little difference between the two lawyers.

Yes, whatever could have given Trump that idea?

Marcy Wheeler observes:

Note what’s not described in that passage, or anywhere else in the story? Precisely when Bill Barr himself learned about the substance of the complaint. When Bill Barr himself learned he was named in the transcript. It does not matter at all whether Bill Barr was surprised to hear the President roping him into framing his opponent’s son (though we should not believe he was surprised until the Attorney General says that publicly himself, preferably under oath). It does not matter when Demers learned of the substance of the complaint, it matters when Barr did, and whether it preceded other actions he took.

What matters is whether Barr learned he was named in the transcript before the DOJ made the decision there was no crime there. What matters is whether Barr knew he was implicated before making the decision not to recuse in advance of a prosecutorial decision made while lacking all the facts. What matters is whether Barr knew he was named in the transcript before getting an OLC opinion justifying withholding the complaint.

It’s hard to believe that Jeff Sessions — someone who was too racist to be confirmed to a federal judgeship by a Republican Senate, but didn’t consider himself the president’s personal attorney — was by far the better of Trump’s Attorneys General, but here we are.