Eric Holder Calls William Barr ‘Unfit’ To Serve As Attorney General

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said William Barr is “unfit” to serve as the country’s top law enforcement officer. In an op-ed Holder penned for The Washington Post, he said that recent comments by his successor have been “fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution.”

Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2015, criticized Barr for a series of public statements and actions that are “so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate” for a leader in the role of the attorney general to make.

Holder pointed to several recent remarks made by Barr that garnered much media attention, including comments this week in which Barr stated that the FBI may have acted in “bad faith” when it opened an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. The Justice Department’s inspector general report said the bureau was justified in pursuing that investigation.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, many conservatives condemned Barr’s mischaracterization of the inspector general’s report.

“[It] was infuriating to watch him publicly undermine an independent inspector general report — based on an exhaustive review of the FBI’s conduct — using partisan talking points bearing no resemblance to the facts his own department has uncovered,” wrote Holder.

Holder, who has previously expressed his reluctance to publicly criticize his successor, also hit Barr for comments he made in November at an event held by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. During that appearance, Barr affirmed his stance as a strong defender of presidential power, mocked Senate Democrats and attacked the so-called resistance movement, as previously reported by The Inquisitr.

Holder wrote that Barr’s attempts to “vilify the President’s critics” are more akin to the tactics of an “unscrupulous” criminal defense lawyer than an attorney general of the United States.

“Virtually since the moment he took office, though, Barr’s words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution,” wrote Holder. “Which is why I now fear that his conduct — running political interference for an increasingly lawless president — will wreak lasting damage.”

Barr and President Donald Trump have pushed a conspiracy theory that the “deep state” was spying on the individuals and operations in the Trump campaign and have argued that the Russia investigation is a partisan affair.

In doing so, they have rejected the findings of nearly every agency across the U.S. intelligence community that determined Russia influenced and disrupted not only the 2016 elections but also the 2018 midterm elections. Among the agencies that have stated Russia’s interference in the elections are the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.