Noah Feldman, Columnist

Barr's Election Warnings Are Death by 1,000 Legalisms

The attorney general’s statements on ballots and voter fraud are misleading.

September 17, 2020 at 2:20 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

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Even before Attorney General William Barr’s reported suggestion that protesters be prosecuted for sedition, and that the mayor of Seattle could be targeted with a criminal investigation, the AG was up to his usual stunts. His repeated comments on ballots and voting demonstrate his distinctive way of distorting the truth. Call it lying by legalism.

Unlike President Donald Trump, Barr rarely makes a statement that blatantly contradicts reality. Instead, he says deeply misleading things that rely on some contorted, technical explanation. The upshot is that he must be able to tell his conscience that he isn’t lying all — while achieving the Trumpian goal of communicating a state of affairs that is contrary to the truth. There’s something distinctively lawyerly about this method. And it’s a big part of why people hate lawyers.