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Government officials await Trump's next firing

12 December 2020
 Dan Ackermann
Via Twitter

President Trump was enraged by a Wall Street Journal scoop that Attorney General Bill Barr worked "for months" during the campaign to conceal the federal investigation of Hunter Biden.

The state of play: The president is re-exploring options for replacing Barr, and Saturday morning tweeted this rebuke: "Why didn’t Bill Barr reveal the truth to the public, before the Election, about Hunter Biden[?]"

A senior White House official said: "It's going to be the longest month."

Why it matters: Barr was viewed as a staunch Trump loyalist — and heavily criticized for the way he pre-spun the Mueller report in the president’s favor. But like many top Trump officials, even he has failed to go far enough to satisfy Trump's desires.

  • For many top officials in the government, it's a white-knuckle ride to Jan. 20 — with Trump making ever more outlandish demands.

The big picture: Life inside the White House since the election has been a daily sweepstakes on who'll get fired first — or at all: Barr, FDA commissioner Steve Hahn or CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Behind the scenes: Trump was privately venting about Barr on Friday with confidants, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), sources familiar with the discussions tell me.

  • A congressional source familiar with the discussions said it's unclear whether the president will follow through.

The intrigue: The fact that the Journal article was single-sourced made people close to the president suspect, despite not knowing, that it came directly from Barr — or from a sanctioned representative as a way to burnish his reputation with legal peers post-Trump.

  • To be clear, these sources have no evidence of how The Journal got the story. But that perception is part of what's driving West Wing anger.
  • The Journal's headline: "Barr Worked to Keep Hunter Biden Probes From Public View During Election ... The attorney general knew for months about investigations into Biden’s business and financial dealings."

Barr has discussed with friends the idea of leaving before the end of Trump’s term.

  • The N.Y. Timesreported Sunday that Barr might announce his departure before the end of the year. As of Thursday, The Times later reported, Barr planned to stay.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.