Timothy L. O'Brien, Columnist

William Barr Only Claims to Respect the Rule of Law

House Democrats exposed the attorney general’s willingness to reinvent the rules for Trump.

July 29, 2020 at 10:30 AM UTC

Timothy L. O'Brien is senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. A former editor and reporter for the New York Times, he is author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.”

Legendary composure.
Photographer: Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Bloomberg

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Attorney General William Barr is famously unflappable, the legal technician and savvy Washington insider unswayed by lesser minds or weaker wills. But on Tuesday, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing examining the past 19 months of his tenure, Barr’s legendary composure dissolved several times. His anger flared at moments when his interlocutors didn’t share his unwavering faith in himself.

“What I’ve been trying to do is restore the rule of law,” Barr said early in his testimony, offering an animating principle for his leadership of the Justice Department. “The rule of law is, in essence, that we have one rule for everybody.”