theintercept--2020-05-21--Is Bill Barr the Most Dangerous Member of the Trump Administration?

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Attorney General William Barr has emerged as the shrewdest and most effective member of the Trump administration, weaponizing the Department of Justice to protect the president and his allies while threatening his enemies with legal retribution. He has made it clear that in sharp contrast to the traditionally independent role of the AG, he is willing to serve as Donald Trump’s enforcer, providing a facade of legal propriety to the president’s election-year political maneuverings. What does this mean for the future of American politics? How bad could things get if Trump secures a second term this November? Emily Bazelon, Yale research fellow, staff writer for New York Times magazine, and host of Slate’s “Political Gabfest,” joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss.
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Emily Bazelon: When you worry about the Justice Department being used as a tool that could interfere in the next election, then you’re talking about really throwing rule of law out the window entirely. That’s what autocrats do.
[Musical interlude.]
MH: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Mehdi Hasan.
We often talk on this show about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, the threat he poses to democracy, his abuses of power and the rule of law.
But could he do any of that, if he didn’t have cover from the Justice Department, if he didn’t have loyal Attorney General Bill Barr?
EB: I think Bill Barr is perhaps Trump’s most effective appointee right now.
MH: That’s my guest, Emily Bazelon, Yale University law lecturer, New York Times magazine staff writer, and co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest. She thinks Barr is helping pave the way to a Trumpian autocracy.
So, on today’s show: Is Attorney General Bill Barr the most dangerous man in America?
Al Sharpton: What is Obamagate?
News Anchor: The plot thickens in what President Trump has deemed as Obamagate.
Jesse Watters: It looks like the Obamagate scandal is about to get a lot bigger.
Brett Baier: The President tweeting, “Obamagate makes Watergate look small-time.”
Lou Dobbs: Senator Lindsey Graham says he wants to find out more about Obamagate
President Donald J. Trump: Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time. And it’s a disgrace that it happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.
MH: We’re close to 100,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus, but the president of the United States wants you not to think about that, and instead to focus on what he believes was a Deep-State, criminal conspiracy against him and his team — a criminal conspiracy led by his predecessor. He calls it Obamagate, but he doesn’t actually know what it is, or what crime was supposed to have been committed.
Philip Rucker: What is the crime, exactly, that you’re accusing him of?
DJT: You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours. John, please.
MH: A central part of the big anti-Obama, anti-Biden conspiracy theory from Trump right now revolves around the prosecution of General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who was fired by Trump for lying to the Vice President about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and who twice pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
Flynn, though, has since become a martyr in MAGA circles, where he’s seen as proof that Obama, and Biden, and the FBI, and the evil Deep State were out to get Trump, from before he was even elected. Earlier this month, Bill Barr, the attorney general, and his Department of Justice decided to drop criminal charges against Flynn — a decision which no career prosecutor at the DOJ signed their name onto, by the way. This is how the attorney general defended that controversial move in a rare CBS TV interview last week:
Catherine Herridge: Does the fact remain that he lied?
Attorney General William Barr: Well, you know, people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes.
CH: What should Americans take away from your action is the Flynn case today?
WB: I want to make sure that we restore confidence in the system. There’s only one standard of justice.
MH: Confidence in the system? There has never been LESS confidence in it. And this isn’t some partisan, left/right thing, either: Republican Donald Ayer, who served as deputy attorney general under George Bush Sr., and has known Barr for 40 years, he says the current attorney general is helping Trump become an autocrat, he’s destroying the Justice Department, and that he should resign.
Last week, more than 2,000 former officials of the Justice Department and the FBI, who served under Republican and Democratic presidents, also called on Barr to resign as AG, for “political interference in Flynn’s prosecution” and for having “once again assaulted the rule of law” — the “once again” referring to the fact that Barr’s DOJ also overruled career prosecutors back in February to get a softer sentence for another convicted criminal, and former Trump adviser, Roger Stone.
But, of course, Barr won’t be resigning. He’s more powerful, more influential, more popular with his boss, the president, than ever before.
DJT: Bill Barr is a man of unbelievable credibility and courage, and he’s going to go down in the history books.
MH: Well, he’s definitely going to go down in modern American history as perhaps the most compromised, policitized, partisan, illiberal attorney general of all.
But let’s be clear: that’s precisely why Barr is the attorney general of Donald Trump’s dreams.
At first, Trump thought his dream guy was Jeff Sessions, the former far-right Republican senator from Alabama, and his original AG. But even Sessions wasn’t pliant or corrupt enough for this president.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump is said to have shouted in anger, at his aides, when he heard the news in 2017 that then-AG Sessions would be recusing himself from the Russia inquiry. Roy Cohn was Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, who was also a lawyer to prominent Mafia figures and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s top aide during his anti-communist witch hunt in the 1950s.
That’s how Trump sees the office of Attorney General: as his own Roy Cohn, his own personal lawyer and fixer. But here’s what’s worse: that’s apparently how Bill Barr sees himself, too.
Because in almost every major scandal of this presidency over the past 12 months or so, Barr has been there to shield Trump, to protect the president; not the rule of law, not the Department of Justice, not the work of career prosecutors, and certainly not the American people.
Take the Mueller report. Barr went out of his way to spin it beforehand, in Trump’s favor. For example, Barr told reporters that Mueller’s decision not to charge the president with a crime had nothing to do with long-standing DOJ policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.
Robert Mueller said the exact opposite, both in his report and at a later press conference. A federal judge later criticized Barr for his “lack of candor” and called his official summary of the Mueller report “distorted” and “misleading.”
Nevertheless, the attorney general has spent the past year trying to discredit both the Mueller report and the original Russia investigation by U.S.law enforcement and intelligence agencies; he even launched an investigation into the investigators, which is still ongoing.
Listen to the kind of hyperbole Barr comes up with to curry favor with Trump on this issue:
WB: What happened to the president, in the 2016 election, and throughout the first two years of his administration was abhorrent. It was a grave injustice, and it was unprecedented in American history.
MH: Take Trump’s tax returns. When the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office tried to get a hold of Trump’s tax returns last October, Barr’s Justice Department officially joined the case and asked the judge to block the subpoena. Trump was involved in that case, not as the president but as a private citizen, so why on earth would federal prosecutors get involved on his behalf?
Because Barr understands that it’s his job to play personal lawyer to Trump, not to play lawyer for the American people.
Take the Ukraine whistleblower, whose revelations ultimately led to the impeachment of President Trump. Barr’s DOJ conveniently declined to investigate the whistleblower complaint about the president’s phone call last July with President Zelensky of Ukraine, when it came to them. That DOJ decision led dozens of government inspectors general to warn that Barr’s Justice Department “could seriously undermine the critical role whistle blowers play.”
And by the way, what a shameless conflict of interest that was, given the call transcript shows Trump referred to Barr by name in his chat with the Ukrainian president, and not in a good way, either, saying: “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.”
Rudy Giuliani, remember, is the president’s official personal lawyer, whereas Bill Barr it seems, is just his unofficial personal lawyer.
But, of course, Barr has form when it comes to covering up for Republican presidents and helping them abuse their powers, at home and abroad. A lot of people are not aware of the fact that this is not Barr’s first rodeo — he was attorney general for 18 months under George Bush Sr., a period in which he helped the elder Bush cover up the Iran-Contra affair — you remember, Iran-Contra, right? When the Reagan-Bush administration secretly traded missiles for Americans hostages in Lebanon, and then illegally used the proceeds of those arms sales to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
In the final days of his presidency, Bush Sr. issued pardons to six defendants in the Iran-Contra affair, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger — on the eve of Weinberger’s trial for perjury and obstruction of justice. The independent counsel at the time, Lawrence Walsh, accused Bush of “misconduct” and of helping to complete “the Iran-Contra cover-up.” And who advised Bush to dole out those six dodgy pardons? His attorney general, of course, Bill Barr.
Now, that should have finished his career as a public official — but not in D.C.. No, this is a town where Joe Biden praised Barr years later as “one of the best” attorney generals he ever worked with. Biden also voted for Barr to be AG back in 1990, when he was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and even hosted the Barr family at his home in Delaware. This is a town where in 2019, just last year, three Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to confirm Barr as attorney general, despite his awful Iran-Contra record.
And that’s part of the reason why Barr is so dangerous, and why we’re talking about him on the show today. He’s not just a yes-man. They’re a dime a dozen in this administration of sycophants and grifters. No, Barr is a seriously smart guy, who has used his intellect, his experience, and his insider knowledge of U.S. government bureaucracy, to advance what’s been called “the unitary executive theory” — which basically says the president has unchecked executive power, that he shouldn’t have to share it in any way with Congress or the courts.
In 2018, before he even joined the administration, Barr wrote a memo against the Russia probe, in which he argued that the president “alone is the executive branch,” in whom “the Constitution vests all federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion.”
Now, Trump clearly wants to be a tinpot dictator — we all know that — he wants to be an autocrat, he wants to be the Viktor Orban of the U.S. And you don’t get to be that kind of leader unless you have the justice system onboard, unless you have loyal allies at the top of the Justice Department, willing to disregard the rule of law, disregard constitutional and political norms, disregard pesky checks and balances.
So you have Trump, who has an instinctive affinity for authoritarianism, given a veneer of legitimacy by Barr, who has an ideological affinity for authoritarianism. Again, that’s what makes Barr so dangerous. He’s Trump’s key legal enabler and protector — and he doesn’t care who knows it, or what the consequences are.
CH: When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?
WB: Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on [laughs] who’s writing the history.
MH: It is indeed. So what happens if Trump wins in November, if he’s re-elected? What damage could he and Barr do to the Constitution and the rule of law, to American democracy itself, in a second term? And how much damage have they already done?
[Musical interlude]
MH: My guest today has been following Bill Barr for many years now. Emily Bazelon is a lecturer and senior research fellow at Yale Law School, co-host of the Slate’s hugely popular podcast Political Gabfest, and a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. She not only profiled Bill Barr for the Times Magazine back in October, but more recently co-authored an op-ed for the paper, headlined: “There Used to Be Justice. Now We Have Bill Barr.”
Emily, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.
EB: You are so welcome! Thanks for having me.
MH: As high-level Trump appointees go, how dangerous is Bill Barr, in your view?
EB: I think Bill Barr is perhaps Trump’s most effective appointee right now, the person who is the best at getting done the top priorities for President Trump. And I think for the Justice Department, those aren’t so much a matter of traditional policy areas like criminal justice or even civil rights, which in past Republican administrations, we’ve seen real reversals in civil rights policy and enforcement. And some of that’s going on in this Justice Department. But what has emerged as the key issue is protecting President Trump and people who are close to him. And also, I think, trying to gather evidence that could hurt Democrats who are opposing President Trump. And so we see Bill Barr take his theory of a kind of all powerful executive, which he’s held for a long time, and really put it at the disposal of this particular president.
MH: So, I agree with you. I think the fact that he’s actually competent and he’s effective, unlike a lot of the other kind of unqualified grifters in this administration, suggests that, you know, we need to take him much more seriously. When Trump you know, famously said, ‘I want my own Roy Cohn, I want my own personal fixer,’ was that what he was specifically looking for in Barr? And has Barr played that role, happily, enthusiastically in your view?
EB: Yeah, well, there’s this amazing moment before Barr’s appointed and Barr is basically in retirement. He had been the attorney general for George H.W. Bush, he had a career before that in the Justice Department, and then, after that, he made a lot of money representing corporations in private practice.
But he had really receded from private — from public view. And then he writes this memo in which he says that the Mueller investigation is terrible, and should never have happened, and is very critical of the way Bob Mueller is operating, which is kind of amazing, because they had been pretty close colleagues and supposedly friends before this.
And so, this unasked for memo, which Barr sends to top officials of the Justice Department, it’s kind of like a job audition, or at least that’s how it appears in retrospect. So you see in this memo, someone who is promising pretty much exactly what Trump wants, which is to make Mueller go away, to diminish the problem of investigations for his, for his administration as much as possible. And Barr is someone who I think a lot of people in the Washington establishment, in both parties, expected to be independent. But, in fact, Barr’s conception of the office is that the attorney general should really be working hand-in-glove with the President. And I think Barr has been very, very good at exactly that.
MH: It’s funny that you mentioned that, his conception of executive power, his memo, this goes back many decades to when he served under Reagan and Bush Sr., how the, how the attorney general should work hand in glove with the president. What’s interesting about the whole unitary executive theory is that republicans like Barr, Emily, correct me if I’m wrong, they really — they only really believe in it under a Republican president. It’s not like they give the same leeway on executive power to an Obama or a Clinton. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when Obama was being accused of being a dictator, of being an abuser of executive power.
EB: Right, I mean, it’s hard to hold Barr individually accountable for this, because he wasn’t so much in the public eye. But you are right. He joined an op-ed during the Obama administration that did not take the same kind of view of giving President Obama the benefit of the doubt in the way in which he has really amplified presidential power and the executive branch under President Trump.
I also think, you know, when we’re talking about how effective Barr is, it’s really important to look at his media appearances and the way he is able to kind of glide through certain questioning. He just seems very unruffled. Like, he’s got this, he has an answer for everything. You have to know quite a lot to understand what the problem is, if any, in what he’s saying. If you’re just sort of looking for someone who can sound like they’re making sense and upholding the norms of the Justice Department, he kind of passes that test in a way that some of the other Trump officials are just not as dexterous.
MH: No, you’re undoubtedly correct that he doesn’t come across like a madman or a kind of complete incompetent. You know, you don’t watch an interview with him and laugh your head off like you would if you watched, you know, a Ben Carson or whatever [laughs], or one of the many other … interesting appointees that Trump has brought into the cabinet. It helps, I guess, that he gives so few interviews, and when he does, he gets softballs of the type he received from Catherine Herridge of CBS News last week; I guess that’s very helpful. He reminds me kind of a bit like a Dick Cheney figure, in this Trump administration.
EB: Yeah, or Donald Rumsfeld, right? I mean, someone who is really good at holding and exercising power, and knows how to operate within an administration. I mean, he has deep experience in the Justice Department; that’s really useful for running it. And in moments where he has, in some way, deviated publicly from President Trump — we’ve seen this a couple of times — he did it enough to kind of preserve this veneer of independence. But at the same time, he’s obviously not really making President Trump upset, right? So you see this sort of minor correction in public, and then Barr going back to being a very effective operative, I would say, for the President.
MH: So when, when, for example, he kind of briefed, oh, you know, he was upset to have been mentioned in the Ukraine phone call transcript, or when he said, ‘Oh, the tweets are making my life difficult.’ But yes, as you say, he doesn’t — you know, at the end of the day, those are not big things in the grand scheme of things.
Let me ask you this: Bill Barr, of course, is not the first crony to be appointed to the DOJ. How does he compare to other dodgy, corrupt, or partisan AGs in modern American history?
EB: So you know, we’ve had a bunch of these people. [Laughs]
MH: Great!
EB: I mean, you know, Nixon’s Attorney General John Michell went to jail during Watergate.
And in the 20th century, the number of people who are partisan or who are hacks — I would not call Barr a hack, but there have been some serious hacks as attorney general — what we’re really talking about is this long-running tension in the American system. You have the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, who’s part of the executive branch, is appointed by the president, can be fired by the president, is somehow supposed to be independent.
Since Watergate, there has been much more of a norm that presidents are supposed to separate themselves from any kind of investigation that might affect them or anyone close to them in their administration, right? You’re just supposed to keep this at hand’s length. But as we’ve seen in this administration, norms are easily eroded. If you decided you don’t care about them, then they don’t exist anymore. And I think that Barr has really pushed that to make the attorney general’s office, to kind of take it back to a pre-Watergate mode, in which these ideas about independence just are shredded.
MH: He does so much stuff. [Laughs.] He’s a very busy man. Just while we’re recording this interview, CNN are reporting a new story about his multiple meetings with John Durham, the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the Russia investigators. And they’re asking about, you know, what’s the independence of John Durham.
Of all the dodgy things that he’s done since taking office, just a little over a year ago, what’s the worst thing he’s done? What’s the one that stood out to you? Most that made you go? What the hell?
EB: Well, this appointment of John Durham, I’m not sure it’s the worst thing but it comes at this moment—so, you know, we have all of the Mueller investigation, we have, you know, Mueller’s appointment through DOJ, through the Justice Department in the pre-Barr era, in which Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general, recused himself.
That opened the door to Mueller. We have this long period, it lasts for years, in which whatever Mueller is going to conclude, it becomes crucial for the kind of rule of law in America for him to finish his work. Okay, he finishes. Then, meanwhile, there is the inspector general who is the normal watchdog in the Justice Department who’s looking into whether there was anything wrong with the basis for the Mueller investigation, for the FBI getting worried about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and ties between Trump and Russia.
The inspector general concludes there was a basis for the FBI’s investigation. Other problems that relate to a particular kind of warrant, called a FISA warrant, but those are like ongoing concerns— they’re not saying that there was something wrong with or corrupt, at all, with what Mueller did or with what the FBI did.
Then you have Barr show up and say, ‘You know what, I’m launching my own —potentially criminal — investigation into these same investigators, and that is putting the cloud again over the whole Mueller investigation. It’s creating a situation in which you could see the Justice Department bringing criminal charges against people who worked for the government. Last week, we saw Barr say, ‘Oh, I’m not talking about criminal charges against President Obama or Joe Biden. But I might be talking about criminal charges against other people.’
When you worry about the Justice Department being used as a tool that could interfere in the next election, then you’re, you’re talking about really throwing rule of law out the window entirely. Because, of course, our cure for a president who we see as abusing his power is to vote him out of office. If you’re trying to interfere with that by making it seem like the other side is the corrupt side, and you don’t have a lot of basis for that, that is, you know — that’s what autocrats do.
MH: The irony is that Democrats share some responsibility for Barr, too, back in 1991. It was chairman Joe Biden of the Senate Judiciary Committee who supported his nomination as AG under Bush Sr. I believe he later called him one of the finest AGs he ever worked with; that was after Iran-Contra. And, last year, three Senate Democrats — Manchin, Simena, and Jones voted with Republicans to confirm him as AG, this time for Trump.
EB: Yeah, I mean, there really was this feeling in Washington that Barr was like, going to be the grown-up in the room.
MH: We’ve seen how that’s played out before with others.
EB: Exactly. This seems to be like Lucy with the football lesson that people have to learn over and over again, then the media has to learn over and over again, and the Trump administration.
So I guess you have to remember that, you know, Jeff Sessions, the former Attorney General, had this pretty tumultuous time in office and in other — you know, Sessions, really did support the role of law by recusing himself from the Mueller investigation based on a meeting he had with the Russian ambassador when he was advising the Trump campaign. So, like, that was Sessions obeying the advice of the ethics experts in the Justice Department. It’s like a beginning-of-Trump-era move that it’s hard to imagine other people making now.
But Sessions was deeply unpopular among liberals, right? I mean, he was doing all of this immigration enforcement, particularly, that really troubled people, and troubled Democrats.
Then you have Matt Whittaker come in, this kind of unconfirmed acting attorney general, who looks like he’s totally unqualified, and that gets Washington all riled up. That was the context for Barr’s appointment by Trump. And I think there was this sense that, oh, George H.W.’s administration, like, those are the old school more reliable, by-the-book Republicans, and he’s going to exercise independent oversight over President Trump and that just was not actually what his record showed. [Laughs.]
MH: Which is so frustrating because yes, he did have this record: H.W. Bush gave a bunch of pardons out on the eve of leaving office, which the independent counsel at that time castigated him for, accused him of a cover up and it was Barr who helped give out the pardons as attorney general.
EB: Right. It’s true. I mean, I was looking back this morning at this oral history that Barr did years ago for the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, and they asked about these pardons. And Muller says, “I went over and told the president I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he’s at it, he should pardon about five others. I said, ’In for a penny in for a pound.’” In other words, Barr was really pushing to broaden the use of Bush’s pardon-power here, and yet there was just very little attention to this before he was appointed.
I have to say that I, personally, I wasn’t looking into Barr, like I wasn’t investigating him as a journalist before he got appointed, and I feel bad about that. Like, we should have been paying more attention to this.
MH: And the whole Iran-Contra pardons put the whole General-Flynn-dropping-of-charges-Roger’s-sentence-lighter-sentencing in a whole new context, when you bear in mind how he, as you say, how he wanted to a president to exercise pardon-power, with much worse offenses, people who were actually on trial at the time.
And just on the subject of Iran, you mentioned in your profile of him for the New York Times Magazine, that he advised the elder George Bush that he didn’t need congressional approval to attack Iraq in 1991. But Bush ignored him and actually got congressional approval for the first Gulf War. So Barr’s not gonna be the guy telling Trump to go to Congress before this president decides to attack Iran, is he?
EB: Right. I mean, you mentioned the unitary executive theory, and this is the idea that the President has a lot of power — like really a broader scope of power that we normally think of. And in this area of whether you can declare a war, I mean, we know that Congress has to formally declare a war, but we’ve also seen the White House over the centuries really encroach more and more on Congress’s war-making authority by sending troops to various places, by, you know, using the intelligence agencies to do things that involve violence.
And what you see when Barr is earlier on in the Justice Department is the situation in which he pushes to — he pushes to write an opinion in the Justice Department that gives the Reagan administration the power to kidnap somebody on foreign soil who is not a U.S. national. And previously, the Justice Department thought that was illegal; Barr changed that position within the Justice Department, and then he kept that change in position secret for about four years. So this case is being litigated and nobody knows that the Justice Department has actually decided that, that the president has this kind of kidnapping power. You can see there, that’s a really, a big expanse of the president’s power to do things.
MH: And in terms of power, you say the president, as — you know — his belief is that the president has this kind of unchecked executive power. Congress obviously has powers, too — the Congress actually has the power to impeach an attorney general. It’s never been used before, I believe, but Elizabeth Warren called for it last year after his behavior over the Mueller inquiry and his kind of misleading of the public. Do you think that’s ever going to be on the table, impeaching an attorney general like Bill Barr?
EB: I mean, I feel like Barr is too smart to do something that would really make that a serious threat. I mean, certainly we’re not going to see a Senate controlled by Republicans, or even with, you know, a lot of Republican votes, and so you need a supermajority to impeach; you’re not going to see Barr alienate and or antagonize that constituency at all.
And I think, also, there is just this question about impeaching the attorney general versus impeaching the president. And it goes back to these difficult matters of independence. I mean, if the attorney general is really a kind of handmaiden of the president, so to speak, then — and, and his abuses are tied to the president’s own conception of his agenda and what he wants to do, or protecting himself, or smearing his enemies — it’s a little hard to see why you would be separately impeaching the attorney general, though I guess one could imagine some hypothetical world of some heavily Democratic congress after 2020, in which Trump and Barr were impeached together. But it seems pretty far fetched.
MH: True. And, of course,Trump already has been impeached. [Laughs.] So I guess, just looking around for other people to go after.
Just before we finish — you said in your profile of Barr that one of the reasons he offered his services to Trump is because he sees a society in moral decline, beset by moral relativism and secularism and atheism, all of which he, as a devout, right-wing Catholic, is horrified by. But is there this weird situation that we have right now, where you see these Christian warriors going into ideological political battle on behalf of the most un-Christian, anti-Christian person you could ever imagine, the thrice-married, adulterous, ex-casino owner, mega-narcissist Donald J. Trump. Do you think that bothers Barr or he just doesn’t care?
EB: I don’t think it bothers Barr. I think that conservative Christians like Barr have really, really made their peace with President Trump, because he is their vehicle to power.
And I’m so glad you brought up this part of his record, and his issue, because he has been talking about this notion that religious people, religious Christians, are under assault from secularists for decades. Like, it’s very consistent. And when he started making speeches about this as attorney general, people thought it was kind of unsettling for a top government official to be speaking in these very stark terms of, like, religious war. But he has been saying that since the 90s.
And so I think from his point of view, like if you really feel like your whole way of life and your deeply held values of you, and your church, this institution that you think is really important, are under assault by this other side, that you’re the one on the defensive, then you see a president who is going to turn over the Justice Department to you, you don’t care whether that particular guy goes to church or not. Like, that is pretty much beside the point.
MH: That’s true. And deeply depressing. One very last, quick question. I know you have to run Emily. What kind of a threat does a Bill Barr pose to democracy, to the rule of law, to voting rights in a second Trump term, with an extra four years in office?
EB: Yeah, I mean, I am so focused right now, as I think a lot of people are, on having a fair and free election in November. And so, I mostly want Bill Barr to be making sure that there is no interference with that election.
In past elections, the Justice Department has served a very important role at the polls of making sure that voters are not intimidated. We want to see the Justice Department doing that again this year in a way that is completely non-partisan. And we want to make sure that the Justice Department is not joining lawsuits that make it harder for people to vote by diminishing their access instead of expanding it. So I think those issues right now about the election are just paramount.
And then there are these background questions we were talking about earlier. If the Justice Department puts Joe Biden or someone connected to him under some kind of cloud of suspicion with an investigation — and, of course, we saw this with the FBI and Hillary Clinton — that can have an impact on how voters are evaluating choices, especially in a world in which one often feels that what Trump is trying to do is make sure that every politician is kind of smeared, and seems like they’re not worth supporting, right? It’s about kind of embracing a decline, if you will, of American political standards, and making it seem like, yeah, well, we’re all the same.
MH: That is true.
Emily, we will have to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed.
EB: Thanks very much for having me.
[Musical interlude.]
MH: That was Emily Bazelon, of Slate’s Political Gabfest, and of The New York Times Magazine. And that’s our show!
And a reminder to head over to theintercept.com/give and make a donation — $5 or $10 a month, any amount that feels right to you. That’s theintercept.com/give. Shows like this one depend on your support.
Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.
I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please do subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice: iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps new people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks so much!
See you next week.
Correction: June 3, 2020
Mehdi Hasan stated that the Reagan administration secretly traded missiles for hostages in Iran during the Iran-Contra scandal. While the hostages were held by Iranian-backed forces, they were, in fact, held in Lebanon. The transcript has been updated.


theintercept--2020-05-21--The CIA's Murderous Practices, Disinformation Campaigns, and Interference in Other Countries Still S

The CIA's Murderous Practices, Disinformation Campaigns, and Interference in Other Countries Still Shape the World Order and U.S. Politics

In the weeks before the 2016 presidential election , the most powerful former leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency did everything they could to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump .
President Obama ’ s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a full-throated endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “ Putin ha [ s ] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation , ” while George W. Bush ’ s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief , Gen. Michael Hayden , writing in the Washington Post , refrained from endorsing Clinton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of being a “ useful fool , some naif , manipulated by Moscow ” and sounding “ a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.
” Meanwhile , the intelligence community under James Clapper and John Brennan fed morsels to both the Obama DOJ and the U.S. media to suggest a Trump/Russia conspiracy and fuel what became the Russiagate investigation .
In his extraordinary election-advocating Op-Ed , Gen. Hayden , Bush/Cheney ’ s CIA Chief , candidly explained the reasons for the CIA ’ s antipathy for Trump : namely , the GOP candidate ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change efforts in Syria to expand as well as his opposition to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia ( supposedly “ pro-Putin ” positions which , we are now all supposed to forget , Obama largely shared ) .
As has been true since President Harry Truman ’ s creation of the CIA after World War II , interfering in other countries and dictating or changing their governments — through campaigns of mass murder , military coups , arming guerrilla groups , the abolition of democracy , systemic disinformation , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regarded as a divine right , inherent to American exceptionalism .
Anyone who questions that or , worse , opposes it and seeks to impede it ( as the CIA perceived Trump was ) is of suspect loyalties at best .
The CIA ’ s antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory .
The agency became the primary vector for anonymous , illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent and/or blackmail victim .
It worked to ensure the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at least the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It drove the scam Russiagate conspiracy theories .
And before Trump was even inaugurated , open warfare erupted between the president-elect and the agency to the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was risking full-on subversion of his presidency by the agency : Democrats , early in Trump ’ s presidency , saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump ’ s most devoted enemies , and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally .
Leading out-of-power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration and Clinton campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia .
Meanwhile , other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials , such as John Brennan and James Clapper , became beloved liberal celebrities by being hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that , on a virtually daily basis , masqueraded as news .
The all-consuming Russiagate narrative that dominated the first three years of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elevate the CIA as a noble and admirable institution while whitewashing its grotesque history .
Liberal conventional wisdom held that Russian Facebook ads , Twitter bots and the hacking and release of authentic , incriminating DNC emails was some sort of unprecedented , off-the-charts , out-of-the-ordinary crime-of-the-century attack , with several leading Democrats ( including Hillary Clinton ) actually comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor .
The level of historical ignorance and/or jingostic American exceptionalism necessary to believe this is impossible to describe .
Compared to what the CIA has done to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of World War II , and what it continues to do , watching Americans cast Russian interference in the 2016 election through online bots and email hacking ( even if one believes every claim made about it ) as some sort of unique and unprecedented crime against democracy is staggering .
Set against what the CIA has done and continues to do to “ interfere ” in the domestic affairs of other countries — including Russia — the 2016 election was , at most , par for the course for international affairs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ordinary act in the context of CIA interference .
This propaganda was sustainable because the recent history and the current function of the CIA has largely been suppressed .
Thankfully , a just-released book by journalist Vincent Bevins — who spent years as a foreign correspondent covering two countries still marred by brutal CIA interference : Brazil for the Los Angeles Times and Indonesia for the Washington Post — provides one of the best , most informative and most illuminating histories yet of this agency and the way it has shaped the actual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role in the world .
Entitled “ The Jakarta Method : Washington ’ s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World , ” the book primarily documents the indescribably horrific campaigns of mass murder and genocide the CIA sponsored in Indonesia as an instrument for destroying a non-aligned movement of nations who would be loyal to neither Washington nor Moscow .
Critically , Bevins documents how the chilling success of that morally grotesque campaign led to its being barely discussed in U.S. discourse , but then also serving as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interference campaigns in multiple other countries from Guatemala , Chile and Brazil to the Philippines , Vietnam and Central America : the Jakarta Method .
Our newest episode of SYSTEM UPDATE , which debuts today at 2:00 p.m. on The Intercept ’ s YouTube channel , is devoted to a discussion of why this history is so vital : not just for understanding the current international political order but also for distinguishing between fact and fiction in our contemporary political discourse .
In addition to my own observations on this topic , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about what the CIA really is and how it has shaped the world we still inhabit , and why a genuine understanding of both international and domestic politics is impossible without a clear grasp on this story .

In the weeks before the 2016 presidential election , the most powerful former leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency did everything they could to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump. President Obama’s former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell published a full-throated endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed “Putin ha[s] recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” while George W. Bush’s post-9/11 CIA and NSA Chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, writing in the Washington Post, refrained from endorsing Clinton outright but echoed Morrell by accusing Trump of being a “useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow” and sounding “a little bit the conspiratorial Marxist.” Meanwhile, the intelligence community under James Clapper and John Brennan fed morsels to both the Obama DOJ and the U.S. media to suggest a Trump/Russia conspiracy and fuel what became the Russiagate investigation.
In his extraordinary election-advocating op-ed, Hayden, Bush/Cheney’s CIA chief, candidly explained the reasons for the CIA’s antipathy for Trump: namely, the GOP candidate’s stated opposition to allowing CIA regime change efforts in Syria to expand as well as his opposition to arming Ukrainians with lethal weapons to fight Russia (supposedly “pro-Putin” positions which, we are now all supposed to forget, Obama largely shared).
As has been true since President Harry Truman’s creation of the CIA after World War II, interfering in other countries and dictating or changing their governments — through campaigns of mass murder, military coups, arming guerrilla groups, the abolition of democracy, systemic disinformation, and the imposition of savage despots — is regarded as a divine right, inherent to American exceptionalism. Anyone who questions that or, worse, opposes it and seeks to impede it (as the CIA perceived Trump was) is of suspect loyalties at best.
The CIA’s antipathy toward Trump continued after his election victory. The agency became the primary vector for anonymous illegal leaks designed to depict Trump as a Kremlin agent and/or blackmail victim. It worked to ensure the leak of the Steele dossier that clouded at least the first two years of Trump’s presidency. It drove the scam Russiagate conspiracy theories. And before Trump was even inaugurated, open warfare erupted between the president-elect and the agency to the point where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly warned Trump on the Rachel Maddow Show that he was risking full-on subversion of his presidency by the agency:
This turned out to be one of the most prescient and important (and creepy) statements of the Trump presidency: from Chuck Schumer to Rachel Maddow – in early January, 2017, before Trump was even inaugurated: pic.twitter.com/TUaYkksILG — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 8, 2019
Democrats, early in Trump’s presidency, saw clearly that the CIA had become one of Trump’s most devoted enemies, and thus began viewing them as a valuable ally. Leading out-of-power Democratic foreign policy elites from the Obama administration and Clinton campaign joined forces not only with Bush/Cheney neocons but also former CIA officials to create new foreign policy advocacy groups designed to malign and undermine Trump and promote hawkish confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. Meanwhile, other ex-CIA and Homeland Security officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper, became beloved liberal celebrities by being hired by MSNBC and CNN to deliver liberal-pleasing anti-Trump messaging that, on a virtually daily basis, masqueraded as news.
The all-consuming Russiagate narrative that dominated the first three years of Trump’s presidency further served to elevate the CIA as a noble and admirable institution while whitewashing its grotesque history. Liberal conventional wisdom held that Russian Facebook ads, Twitter bots and the hacking and release of authentic, incriminating DNC emails was some sort of unprecedented, off-the-charts, out-of-the-ordinary crime-of-the-century attack, with several leading Democrats (including Hillary Clinton) actually comparing it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.
The level of historical ignorance and/or jingostic American exceptionalism necessary to believe this is impossible to describe. Compared to what the CIA has done to dozens of other countries since the end of World War II, and what it continues to do, watching Americans cast Russian interference in the 2016 election through online bots and email hacking (even if one believes every claim made about it) as some sort of unique and unprecedented crime against democracy is staggering. Set against what the CIA has done and continues to do to “interfere” in the domestic affairs of other countries — including Russia — the 2016 election was, at most, par for the course for international affairs and, more accurately, a trivial and ordinary act in the context of CIA interference.
This propaganda was sustainable because the recent history and the current function of the CIA has largely been suppressed. Thankfully, a just-released book by journalist Vincent Bevins — who spent years as a foreign correspondent covering two countries still marred by brutal CIA interference: Brazil for the Los Angeles Times and Indonesia for the Washington Post — provides one of the best, most informative and most illuminating histories yet of this agency and the way it has shaped the actual, rather than the propagandistic, U.S. role in the world.
Entitled “The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World,” the book primarily documents the indescribably horrific campaigns of mass murder and genocide the CIA sponsored in Indonesia as an instrument for destroying a nonaligned movement of nations who would be loyal to neither Washington nor Moscow. Critically, Bevins documents how the chilling success of that morally grotesque campaign led to its being barely discussed in U.S. discourse, but then also serving as the foundation and model for clandestine CIA interference campaigns in multiple other countries from Guatemala, Chile, and Brazil to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Central America: the Jakarta Method.
Our newest episode of SYSTEM UPDATE, which debuts today at 2:00 p.m. on The Intercept’s YouTube channel, is devoted to a discussion of why this history is so vital: not just for understanding the current international political order but also for distinguishing between fact and fiction in our contemporary political discourse. In addition to my own observations on this topic, I speak to Bevins about his book, about what the CIA really is and how it has shaped the world we still inhabit, and why a genuine understanding of both international and domestic politics is impossible without a clear grasp on this story.


theintercept--2020-05-22--New York City and Los Angeles Slash Budgets — but Not for Police

coronavirus pandemic devastates the economy and tax revenues drop massively across the U.S. , cities have begun to prepare for the hard times ahead by proposing slashed budgets and reduced public services at a time when so many of their residents need them more than ever .
But the austerity measures won ’ t be doled out equally across services .
In New York City , where officials are projecting a $ 7.4 billion drop in tax revenue , the proposed budget for next year is $ 3.4 billion less than last year , with education and youth services facing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only very modest cuts slated for the police department .
In Los Angeles , the police department is the lone city agency that is not facing serious cuts ; it is also slated to receive additional funds for police overtime , even as other city workers are furloughed .
Public-interest advocates have long battled to save funds for public services during yearly budget negotiations , but the current health and economic crisis is making the debate over how cities should spend their reduced funds uniquely urgent and fraught .
And with crime at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people — including for the first time , some city council members — are now explicitly demanding that cities save money for much needed services by cutting police budgets .
“ [ New York City Mayor Bill ] de Blasio is talking about cutting hundreds of millions out of the schools budget and nothing from police , ” said Alex Vitale , who runs the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College .
“ Why are we plowing money into policing when what we need is public health ?
” asked Vitale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NYPD is a dime that we can ’ t have to actually build stronger and healthier communities.
” Public budgets have always been a reflection of the priorities of those in power , and in the United States that priority for decades has been what leaders have called “ public safety , ” which in reality has translated into mass criminalization .
The U.S. spends some $ 100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $ 80 billion on incarceration , according to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Popular Democracy .
In cities across the country , policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget .
“ As a country , we are continuously increasing the amount of spending that we do on policing and criminalization , and that naturally comes with tradeoffs , ” said Kumar Rao , director of the Justice Transformation Program at CPD and an author of the report .
“ We live in a society that has limited public resources , and decisions on where to spend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t spend it on things that communities really need and deserve.
” Investing in police at the cost of public goods like health infrastructure , education , and social support has a disproportionate impact on poor and black and Latino communities in particular — the same communities that are also most impacted by over-policing and by Covid-19 .
“ There ’ s a traditional trope or myth that we don ’ t invest in low-income communities and particularly communities of color across the country , ” said Rao .
“ But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spend a lot of money in those communities , but it ’ s almost entirely on criminalization.
” From New York to Los Angeles , critics of the budgets have in the past been careful to suggest that their cities save money by cutting directly from their police departments .
“ The LAPD budget is seen as untouchable , ” said Jane Nguyen , an organizer with a coalition of city groups that are challenging the city ’ s proposed 2021 budget .
“ No one questions it , city council members don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back against it , and so every year , the mayor proposes giving half the budget to LAPD and council members just rubber-stamp it.
” “ Our kids are not untouchable , our seniors are not untouchable , health care during the pandemic is not untouchable , as you have seen cuts from the state , but the NYPD is untouchable , ” echoed Jason Wu , a trustee for the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys who has strongly condemned the proposed budget in New York .
“ I think we are finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having a more nuanced understanding of what the issues are , so it ’ s not just , do we care about public safety or don ’ t we care about public safety , but what does public safety even mean ?
” New Yorkers on the receiving end of abusive policing have long known that putting more police on the streets doesn ’ t translate into greater public safety .
But the coronavirus pandemic has brought even that reality into clearer focus as police have turned to aggressive social distancing enforcement that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recommendations and was discriminatorily carried out against poor New Yorkers of color .
After a mounting backlash over a series of violent social distancing arrests , city officials announced this month that the NYPD would pull back from making arrests or handing out tickets for perceived failures to respect social distance guidelines .
But the fact that police were tasked with enforcing the measures in the first place was a reminder of just how over-reliant on police the city has become , said critics , who also blasted city officials over a budget @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and “ short-term , narrow vision.
” The mayor ’ s proposal is currently under review by the city council , and a final budget is expected in June .
The mayor ’ s office did not respond to a request for comment .
A spokesperson for the NYPD declined to comment , referring instead to police commissioner Dermot Shea ’ s testimony during a budget hearing last week .
At the hearing , Shea mostly defended the department from criticism of its social distancing enforcement .
But he also pushed back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Do we want to give more for kids ?
Absolutely , ” he said .
“ Where does the money come from ?
That ’ s a tough question.
” For critics of the department , there ’ s little question about where money for services should come from .
“ Police has become the city ’ s answer to all of the problems that we see in our city , ” said Wu .
“ So to address homelessness , we have seen the city sending police to basically tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ the subways.
” “ They ’ re not actually providing homeless people with temporary shelter , let alone permanent , safe , stable housing , ” he added .
“ The pandemic has brought into clear focus just how desperately underinvested things like housing have been in New York City.
” But as revealing as the crisis might have been , it ’ s not clear that city officials have learned many lessons from it , at least as far as the proposed budget for next year goes .
The current proposal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preliminary budget the city released in January , and it identifies nearly $ 2 billion in cuts .
But those cuts hit different city agencies unequally , for instance , reducing the education budget by $ 641.8 million while reducing the NYPD ’ s by just $ 23.8 million .
As Gothamist noted in an analysis of the proposal , the education budget is about five times the size of the police one , but education cuts are 27 times as large as police cuts .
Overall , the proposal allocates some $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1.2 billion for the city ’ s corrections department , in addition to a plan the city had already approved for an $ 8 billion borough-based jails expansion .
The proposed budget also includes $ 116 million in cuts to the Summer Youth Employment Program , a lifeline for 75,000 city youth and about 20 percent of the budget of Department of Youth and Community Development ’ s overall budget , according to an analysis by Girls for Gender Equity .
The department of youth by itself accounts for 12 percent of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it only makes up 0.7 percent of the city ’ s overall budget .
By comparison , the NYPD accounts for only 1 percent of the planned cuts even as it accounts for 6 percent of the overall city budget .
The NYPD spends some $ 40 million a year on overtime alone for school-based police , the group also noted .
Critics say these cuts are only going to exacerbate existing problems , from homelessness to mental health issues , that the police will then be called in to handle even though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They warn that while plummeting revenues might make some cuts inevitable , the budget proposed by the city will only aggravate an already spiraling cycle of underinvestment and criminalization .
“ If you are going to do it , do it evenly , ” said Gwen Carr , the mother of Eric Garner , referring to the cuts on a recent call with families of New Yorkers killed by police .
“ If you are cutting all the other services , cut the police .
In this pandemic , there is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and brutalizing us.
” Carr also pointed to the millions of dollars city taxpayers shell out every year to settle lawsuits against police misconduct — some $ 69 million last year alone , nearly $ 30 million more than what the city paid out a year earlier .
Those lawsuits cost the city some $ 230 million in 2018 and $ 335.5 million in 2017 .
“ It ’ s a shame that we have to pay police to kill our children , ” said Carr .
“ We don ’ t need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for other services , for the community , for the youth , for the hospitals.
” In a series of virtual town halls and at public hearings before two different city council committees this week , police accountability advocates and community members called for a redirection of city resources toward underfunded agencies that they argue will be most essential to New York ’ s recovery .
They called for a budget that includes a hiring freeze for the police department , the cancellation of the new cadet class , and the defunding of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ areas like homelessness , school safety , and youth initiatives .
And in a letter sent last month to the mayor and city council speaker , dozens of groups , including some of the city ’ s largest civil rights and public defender services , called on the city to make “ significant reductions to the NYPD ’ s bloated budget , and to push for greater transparency in how the NYPD spends its vast resources.
” “ New York City is currently spending more on policing than on health , homeless services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combined .
That ’ s wrong and unacceptable , ” the coalition of groups wrote .
“ Social services were stretched thin before this pandemic .
After this pandemic , we should be prepared for an even larger portion of NYC residents who will rely on social services and public infrastructure to survive and we need a budget that reflects this.
” But in a sign both of how deep the need for services in the current crisis and of how far the debate around policing has evolved , advocates aren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police this year .
Some elected officials , who have long been hesitant to publicly target the police department when calling for a more equitable distribution of funds , are now warning that they won ’ t vote for a budget that doesn ’ t reduce funding for police .
And some council members , including Donovan Richards , head of the council ’ s Public Safety Committee , have called for $ 30 million in savings on police overtime and $ 25 million more by cutting the next class of police academy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ painful budget .
I mean , let ’ s be clear , we have $ 7 billion less than we did before , so we have to make some hard decisions , ” said Council Member Brad Lander , who also called for police cuts .
“ But I know this for sure : If there is not enough money in the budget to hire new teachers , and social workers , and mental health counselors , then there sure is not enough money in the budget to hire 2,300 new police officers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dollars that instead of using on policing , you must use on mental health , on youth , on education.
” The Policing and Social Justice Project ’ s proposed cuts for the NYPD include a $ 200 million reduction for the 2021 budget and for the following four years for a total $ 1 billion in cuts by 2025 .
The proposal calls for a cancellation of incoming NYPD officers classes so that police personnel costs can be reduced through attrition rather than layoffs .
And it calls for a reduction in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new technology expenditures .
But those cuts have to be taken in the context of a police department whose spending has grown exponentially in recent years , said Vitale .
Under de Blasio ’ s administration , the police budget has grown from $ 4.6 billion in 2014 to $ 5.6 billion in 2019 , and police overtime costs have ballooned by $ 100 million a year despite plunging crime .
“ So even a $ 1 billion reduction only gets us back to 2014 levels.
” In Los Angeles , too , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services and furloughs 16,000 city employees.The $ 10.5 billion plan includes significant cuts to every city agency but one : the Los Angeles Police Department , which already takes up more than half the city ’ s discretionary budget .
Instead , Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed $ 47 million in additional funds for LAPD overtime — at a time when 55 percent of city residents are unemployed .
Overall , the proposed budget would cut city investment in housing by 9.4 percent and from job programs by 8.9 percent — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 7.1 percent .
That ’ s despite a raging housing crisis , and a police department that ’ s been plagued by scandal after scandal .
“ Everyone understands the injustice of this budget , ” Melina Abdullah , an organizer with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles told The Intercept .
Los Angeles advocacy groups have long rallied against budget proposals that regularly allocate half the city ’ s general funds to police .
But the economic devastation brought by the pandemic has put those numbers in perspective for city residents with new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — which joined a number of others to call for a “ people ’ s budget ” for Los Angeles — was particularly infuriated at the mayor ’ s attempt to fast-track approval of the city ’ s budget by pushing for a full city council vote on Thursday , before lawmakers could properly debate the proposal .
The mayor ’ s office did not respond to a request for comment .
“ They completely bypassed the process , ” said Abdullah .
“ They think nobody ’ s paying attention.
” At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to raise enough awareness around the budget to force the city council to open up the remote proceedings for public comment .
Nearly everyone who called in expressed opposition to the budget .
“ I look at this budget and my stomach turns , ” said a man who called into the hearing on Thursday .
“ We need housing right now , we need people off the streets… It ’ s morally unconscionable what ’ s happening right now.
” “ LA somehow has this reputation as progressive , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is progressive.
” By the end of the hearing , the city council delayed a vote on the budget , which means it will go into effect as-is on July 1 .
Though council members insisted the budget might still be amended , it was a reminder of how little transparency surrounds budget decisions in general , and particularly at a time when those who are most impacted by cuts are also most isolated .
“ Frankly that ’ s how a lot of this stuff happens as a matter of course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ budgets , in particular , for their lack of transparency .
“ In a lot of places , you can see top-line numbers or very high-level departmental spending , but not much beyond that .
So as important as shrinking police , a concurrent effort is for transparency around these budgets .
”

As the coronavirus pandemic devastates the economy and tax revenues drop massively across the U.S., cities have begun to prepare for the hard times ahead by proposing slashed budgets and reduced public services at a time when so many of their residents need them more than ever.
But the austerity measures won’t be doled out equally across services. In New York City, where officials are projecting a $7.4 billion drop in tax revenue, the proposed budget for next year is $3.4 billion less than last year, with education and youth services facing some of the deepest cuts — and only very modest cuts slated for the police department. In Los Angeles, the police department is the lone city agency that is not facing serious cuts; it is also slated to receive additional funds for police overtime, even as other city workers are furloughed.
Public-interest advocates have long battled to save funds for public services during yearly budget negotiations, but the current health and economic crisis is making the debate over how cities should spend their reduced funds uniquely urgent and fraught. And with crime at historic lows, a growing number of people — including for the first time, some city council members — are now explicitly demanding that cities save money for much needed services by cutting police budgets.
“[New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio is talking about cutting hundreds of millions out of the schools budget and nothing from police,” said Alex Vitale, who runs the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College.
“Why are we plowing money into policing when what we need is public health?” asked Vitale. “Every dime spent on the NYPD is a dime that we can’t have to actually build stronger and healthier communities.”
Police Are Untouchable
Public budgets have always been a reflection of the priorities of those in power, and in the United States that priority for decades has been what leaders have called “public safety,” which in reality has translated into mass criminalization. The U.S. spends some $100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $80 billion on incarceration, according to a detailed 2017 report by the Center for Popular Democracy. In cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget.
“As a country, we are continuously increasing the amount of spending that we do on policing and criminalization, and that naturally comes with tradeoffs,” said Kumar Rao, director of the Justice Transformation Program at CPD and an author of the report. “We live in a society that has limited public resources, and decisions on where to spend that kind of money mean that we can’t spend it on things that communities really need and deserve.”
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Investing in police at the cost of public goods like health infrastructure, education, and social support has a disproportionate impact on poor and black and Latino communities in particular — the same communities that are also most impacted by over-policing and by Covid-19.
“There’s a traditional trope or myth that we don’t invest in low-income communities and particularly communities of color across the country,” said Rao. “But in fact, we do. We spend a lot of money in those communities, but it’s almost entirely on criminalization.”
From New York to Los Angeles, critics of the budgets have in the past been careful to suggest that their cities save money by cutting directly from their police departments.
“The LAPD budget is seen as untouchable,” said Jane Nguyen, an organizer with a coalition of city groups that are challenging the city’s proposed 2021 budget. “No one questions it, city council members don’t have the courage to push back against it, and so every year, the mayor proposes giving half the budget to LAPD and council members just rubber-stamp it.”
“Our kids are not untouchable, our seniors are not untouchable, health care during the pandemic is not untouchable, as you have seen cuts from the state, but the NYPD is untouchable,” echoed Jason Wu, a trustee for the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys who has strongly condemned the proposed budget in New York. “I think we are finally at a breaking point where people are having a more nuanced understanding of what the issues are, so it’s not just, do we care about public safety or don’t we care about public safety, but what does public safety even mean?”
Distorted Priorities
New Yorkers on the receiving end of abusive policing have long known that putting more police on the streets doesn’t translate into greater public safety. But the coronavirus pandemic has brought even that reality into clearer focus as police have turned to aggressive social distancing enforcement that defied all common sense and public health recommendations and was discriminatorily carried out against poor New Yorkers of color.
After a mounting backlash over a series of violent social distancing arrests, city officials announced this month that the NYPD would pull back from making arrests or handing out tickets for perceived failures to respect social distance guidelines. But the fact that police were tasked with enforcing the measures in the first place was a reminder of just how over-reliant on police the city has become, said critics, who also blasted city officials over a budget that they say reveals “distorted priorities” and “short-term, narrow vision.”
The mayor’s proposal is currently under review by the city council, and a final budget is expected in June. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the NYPD declined to comment, referring instead to police commissioner Dermot Shea’s testimony during a budget hearing last week. At the hearing, Shea mostly defended the department from criticism of its social distancing enforcement. But he also pushed back against calls to divert funding from police. “Do we want to give more for kids? Absolutely,” he said. “Where does the money come from? That’s a tough question.”
For critics of the department, there’s little question about where money for services should come from. “Police has become the city’s answer to all of the problems that we see in our city,” said Wu. “So to address homelessness, we have seen the city sending police to basically tell homeless people to disappear by ‘sweeping’ the subways.”
“They’re not actually providing homeless people with temporary shelter, let alone permanent, safe, stable housing,” he added. “The pandemic has brought into clear focus just how desperately underinvested things like housing have been in New York City.”
But as revealing as the crisis might have been, it’s not clear that city officials have learned many lessons from it, at least as far as the proposed budget for next year goes.
Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The current proposal cuts some $6 billion from a preliminary budget the city released in January, and it identifies nearly $2 billion in cuts. But those cuts hit different city agencies unequally, for instance, reducing the education budget by $641.8 million while reducing the NYPD’s by just $23.8 million. As Gothamist noted in an analysis of the proposal, the education budget is about five times the size of the police one, but education cuts are 27 times as large as police cuts. Overall, the proposal allocates some $5.6 billion to the NYPD and $1.2 billion for the city’s corrections department, in addition to a plan the city had already approved for an $8 billion borough-based jails expansion.
The proposed budget also includes $116 million in cuts to the Summer Youth Employment Program, a lifeline for 75,000 city youth and about 20 percent of the budget of Department of Youth and Community Development’s overall budget, according to an analysis by Girls for Gender Equity. The department of youth by itself accounts for 12 percent of the city’s proposed cuts even though it only makes up 0.7 percent of the city’s overall budget. By comparison, the NYPD accounts for only 1 percent of the planned cuts even as it accounts for 6 percent of the overall city budget. The NYPD spends some $40 million a year on overtime alone for school-based police, the group also noted.
“If you are cutting all the other services, cut the police.”
Critics say these cuts are only going to exacerbate existing problems, from homelessness to mental health issues, that the police will then be called in to handle even though they are not equipped to do so. They warn that while plummeting revenues might make some cuts inevitable, the budget proposed by the city will only aggravate an already spiraling cycle of underinvestment and criminalization.
“If you are going to do it, do it evenly,” said Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, referring to the cuts on a recent call with families of New Yorkers killed by police. “If you are cutting all the other services, cut the police. In this pandemic, there is no reason for officers to be there terrorizing and brutalizing us.”
Carr also pointed to the millions of dollars city taxpayers shell out every year to settle lawsuits against police misconduct — some $69 million last year alone, nearly $30 million more than what the city paid out a year earlier. Those lawsuits cost the city some $230 million in 2018 and $335.5 million in 2017. “It’s a shame that we have to pay police to kill our children,” said Carr. “We don’t need more police officers, we need money for other services, for the community, for the youth, for the hospitals.”
Cut the Police
In a series of virtual town halls and at public hearings before two different city council committees this week, police accountability advocates and community members called for a redirection of city resources toward underfunded agencies that they argue will be most essential to New York’s recovery. They called for a budget that includes a hiring freeze for the police department, the cancellation of the new cadet class, and the defunding of police initiatives targeting “social service” areas like homelessness, school safety, and youth initiatives. And in a letter sent last month to the mayor and city council speaker, dozens of groups, including some of the city’s largest civil rights and public defender services, called on the city to make “significant reductions to the NYPD’s bloated budget, and to push for greater transparency in how the NYPD spends its vast resources.”
“New York City is currently spending more on policing than on health, homeless services, youth development, and workforce development combined. That’s wrong and unacceptable,” the coalition of groups wrote. “Social services were stretched thin before this pandemic. After this pandemic, we should be prepared for an even larger portion of NYC residents who will rely on social services and public infrastructure to survive and we need a budget that reflects this.”
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But in a sign both of how deep the need for services in the current crisis and of how far the debate around policing has evolved, advocates aren’t the only ones calling for cuts to police this year. Some elected officials, who have long been hesitant to publicly target the police department when calling for a more equitable distribution of funds, are now warning that they won’t vote for a budget that doesn’t reduce funding for police. And some council members, including Donovan Richards, head of the council’s Public Safety Committee, have called for $30 million in savings on police overtime and $25 million more by cutting the next class of police academy cadets.
“It’s a painful budget. I mean, let’s be clear, we have $7 billion less than we did before, so we have to make some hard decisions,” said Council Member Brad Lander, who also called for police cuts. “But I know this for sure: If there is not enough money in the budget to hire new teachers, and social workers, and mental health counselors, then there sure is not enough money in the budget to hire 2,300 new police officers. That is hundreds of millions of dollars that instead of using on policing, you must use on mental health, on youth, on education.”
“If there is not enough money in the budget to hire new teachers, and social workers, and mental health counselors, then there sure is not enough money in the budget to hire 2,300 new police officers.”
“I will not pass the budget unless we have significant cuts from the NYPD,” echoed Council Member Carlos Menchaca. “That line in the sand has to be drawn now.”
Such statements from elected officials and major organizations are “very unusual,” noted Vitale, of the Policing and Social Justice Project. “It’s part of a broader criminal justice shift, which is that more and more groups that had been in the police reform space and were focused on things like accountability have pivoted to this reinvestment model that says, actually, what we need to do is just take resources away from the police.”
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The Policing and Social Justice Project’s proposed cuts for the NYPD include a $200 million reduction for the 2021 budget and for the following four years for a total $1 billion in cuts by 2025. The proposal calls for a cancellation of incoming NYPD officers classes so that police personnel costs can be reduced through attrition rather than layoffs. And it calls for a reduction in overtime and $34 million cuts to new technology expenditures. But those cuts have to be taken in the context of a police department whose spending has grown exponentially in recent years, said Vitale. Under de Blasio’s administration, the police budget has grown from $4.6 billion in 2014 to $5.6 billion in 2019, and police overtime costs have ballooned by $100 million a year despite plunging crime.
“So even a $1 billion reduction only gets us back to 2014 levels.”
The People’s Budget
In Los Angeles, too, the mayor’s proposed budget slashes services and furloughs 16,000 city employees. The $10.5 billion plan includes significant cuts to every city agency but one: the Los Angeles Police Department, which already takes up more than half the city’s discretionary budget. Instead, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed $47 million in additional funds for LAPD overtime — at a time when 55 percent of city residents are unemployed. Overall, the proposed budget would cut city investment in housing by 9.4 percent and from job programs by 8.9 percent — all while boosting expenditure on police by 7.1 percent. That’s despite a raging housing crisis, and a police department that’s been plagued by scandal after scandal.
“Everyone understands the injustice of this budget,” Melina Abdullah, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles told The Intercept.
Los Angeles advocacy groups have long rallied against budget proposals that regularly allocate half the city’s general funds to police. But the economic devastation brought by the pandemic has put those numbers in perspective for city residents with new urgency, she added.
“Everyone understands the injustice of this budget.”
The group — which joined a number of others to call for a “people’s budget” for Los Angeles — was particularly infuriated at the mayor’s attempt to fast-track approval of the city’s budget by pushing for a full city council vote on Thursday, before lawmakers could properly debate the proposal. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“They completely bypassed the process,” said Abdullah. “They think nobody’s paying attention.” At the last minute, local activists were able to raise enough awareness around the budget to force the city council to open up the remote proceedings for public comment. Nearly everyone who called in expressed opposition to the budget.
“I look at this budget and my stomach turns,” said a man who called into the hearing on Thursday. “We need housing right now, we need people off the streets… It’s morally unconscionable what’s happening right now.”
“LA somehow has this reputation as progressive,” said another caller. “Absolutely nothing about this is progressive.”
By the end of the hearing, the city council delayed a vote on the budget, which means it will go into effect as-is on July 1. Though council members insisted the budget might still be amended, it was a reminder of how little transparency surrounds budget decisions in general, and particularly at a time when those who are most impacted by cuts are also most isolated.
“Frankly that’s how a lot of this stuff happens as a matter of course,” said Rao, citing police budgets, in particular, for their lack of transparency. “In a lot of places, you can see top-line numbers or very high-level departmental spending, but not much beyond that. So as important as shrinking police, a concurrent effort is for transparency around these budgets.”