A year ago I wrote in these pages in a column entitled “It’s Up to You Now, General Barr” that our country was facing political subversion at a level not seen since the Civil War. Our government was so corrupt that President Trump needed the equivalent of a Ulysses S. Grant in the role of Attorney General in order to win the current civil war occurring in our federal government. Recent events give us hope that William P. Barr may in fact be just that man.
This modern civil war pits Trump government loyalists, constitutional conservative activists and allies, and a plurality of Americans who believe in the Republic as founded on one side, against what many call the Deep State, consisting of the Democrat establishment, Never-Trumper Republicans, government careerists and socialist-minded Americans, on the other.
My hope was that William Barr would be the man with the fortitude, integrity and fearlessness to win this war for Trump, just as Lincoln finally landed on Grant to turn the tide in the war between North and South. In the first major skirmish, Barr has been victorious.
The recent exposure of devastating records from the FBI revealing the outrageous entrapment of LTG Michael Flynn by the top officials in that agency, along with the withdrawal of the continued prosecution of Flynn by the Justice Department, might represent the equivalent of Grant’s victory at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862.
Shiloh was a chaotic, pitched battle fought in Hardin County, Tennessee by the North’s Army of the Tennessee, led by Major General Grant, against the Confederate Army of the Mississippi, led by Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston. The Union suffered slightly over 13,000 killed and wounded in the battle, the Confederates roughly 10,700 killed and wounded. The Confederates fought bravely, with their 40,000 troops outnumbered by the North’s 63,000. Gen. Johnston was killed in the fighting. The Union was victorious.
Grant came under much criticism in the North for the bloody losses he took, and his handling of the battle, but Lincoln recognized and appreciated Grant’s aggressive spirit. When northern newspapers howled about the number of Union casualties, Lincoln famously replied, “I can't spare this man; he fights.”
William Barr fights. Unlike his predecessor, the hapless Jeff Sessions, Barr has demonstrated a willingness to take on the rogue government-within-the-government. He’s brought in good “generals” to work under him, like US Attorneys Jeff Jensen and John Durham. Jensen, a 10-year veteran FBI agent before becoming US Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, reviewed the evidence in the Flynn case, saw the railroading that occurred, and recommended dismissing the case.
This decision, and the ensuing events in the Flynn case, may be a turning point as President Trump tries to regain control of a rogue federal bureaucracy at war not only with his administration but, really, with the American people as a whole.
There is a reason that LTG Flynn was targeted so vigorously by DOJ, although the precise reason is still to be clearly defined. Conjecture has it that President Obama despised Flynn because, as Obama’s Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn refused to support Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Others say it was because Flynn rejected Obama’s downplaying the threat of ISIS. Still others suggested that Flynn was hated by the intelligence community because he planned a massive reorganization of the IC as Trump’s National Security Advisor. Finally, many say simply that Flynn “knows where the bodies are buried” in the Obama administration. Maybe there is a huge “truth bomb” that Flynn possesses about the Obama administration which required him to be permanently discredited on a false-statements conviction.
Whatever the case, and it may be a combination of them, the vigor with which he was pursued by the Obama administration is illustrated by the recent revelations of the “unmaskings” that occurred of Flynn’s name in NSA intercepts and intelligence reports. The man was being very closely monitored. Unmasking of his name, a highly intrusive action to take upon an American citizen, whose Fourth Amendment rights are supposed to be protected under the law, was requested by no less than a staggering 39 officials in the Obama administration, including even by Vice President Joe Biden, between November 30, 2016 and January 12, 2017.
It appears that Flynn terrified Obama, which is reinforced by the apoplectic reaction by Obama, former Obama administration apparatchiks, and their minions in the mainstream media to the DOJ decision to drop the charges against Flynn. It prompted Obama to criticize the decision in a conference call with his administration’s alumni as putting “the rule of law at risk.” That sound bite of the call was then helpfully leaked to the media.
So what is Barack Obama so afraid of? As the saying goes, you know you’re over the target when you’re taking flak. Hopefully, as more revelations undoubtedly spill forth, the source of Obama’s angst will reveal itself.
Shiloh represented the greatest loss of American life in a battle up to that point in our history. As the American Civil War dragged on, the battles would become bloodier and bloodier. The battles of Antietam, Stones River, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg and Gettysburg would rack up higher and higher body counts, but Grant, and Lincoln, stayed firm and held the course.
Attorney General Barr and President Trump must be equally steadfast in their resolve to defeat the forces in this country that have abandoned the people and the Constitutional principles which undergird our Republic. This contest in the life of our country is no less consequential to its continued viability than the forces that nearly tore it apart 159 years ago.
There are other “generals” fighting in this war for the good of our country, some of whom should in theory be on the opposite side of Barr, such as Flynn’s indomitable and relentless attorney, Sidney Powell, who is a force of nature. However, she and Barr are fighting for the same cause – justice.
Let us hope that the outcome of this war for our country’s soul results in a government that is once again subservient to the people. Presidents Lincoln and Trump would surely have it no other way.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 30 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, and The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at @BillMarshallDC1. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)