William Barr Biography
William Barr ( William Pelham Barr) an American two-time United States Attorney who was appointed by President Donald Trump as the 85th Attorney General and has served in that role since February 14, 2019.
He previously served in the position from 1991 to 1993, in the administration of George H. W. Bush. Before becoming Attorney General the first time, he held numerous other posts within the Department of Justice, including serving as Deputy Attorney General from 1990 to 1991. He is as well a longtime proponent of the unitary executive theory of unfettered presidential authority. He is a member of the Republican Party.
William Barr Age
Barr was born on 23 May 1950 in New York City, New York, United States.
William Barr Career
From 1973 to 1977, William Barr was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a law clerk to Judge Malcolm Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1977 through 1978.
From May 3, 1982, to September 5, 1983, he served on the domestic policy staff at the Reagan White House with his official title being Deputy Assistant Director for Legal Policy. Barr was also in private practice for nine years with the Washington law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge.
U.S. Department of Justice
In 1989, at the beginning of his administration, President George H. W. Bush appointed William to the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), an office which functions as the legal advisor for the President and executive agencies.
Barr was known as a strong defender of presidential power and wrote advisory opinions justifying the U.S. invasion of Panama. He was also known for the arrest of Manuel Noriega, and a controversial opinion that the FBI could enter onto foreign soil without the consent of the host government to apprehend fugitives wanted by the United States government for terrorism or drug-trafficking.
He declined a congressional request for the full opinion, but instead provided a document that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Congress subpoenaed the opinion, and its public release after his departure from the Justice Department showed he had omitted significant findings in the opinion from his summary document.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General (1990–1991)
In May 1990, he was appointed Deputy Attorney General, the official responsible for the day-to-day management of the Department. According to media reports, he was generally praised for his professional management of the Department. During August 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh resigned to campaign for the Senate, William Barr was named Acting Attorney General.
Three days after he accepted that position, 121 Cuban inmates, awaiting deportation to Cuba, seized 9 hostages at the Talladega federal prison. Barr directed the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to assault the prison, which resulted in rescuing all hostages without loss of life.
instances where Donald Trump tried to either impede or end the Special Counsel investigation, analyzing each in terms of the three factors necessary for a criminal charge of obstruction.
During a press conference, William Barr said Mueller’s report contained “substantial evidence” that Trump was “frustrated and angered” because of his belief that the “investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks”; however, the report gave no indication that Trump’s frustrations with the investigation would mitigate obstructing behavior.
Barr also said it would not be criminal obstruction of justice for a president to instruct a staffer to lie to investigators about the president’s actions, and suggested a president could legally terminate an investigation into himself if he was being “falsely accused”.
William Barr Robert Mueller
Barr and Robert Mueller have known each other since the 1980s and are said to be good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr’s daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
William Barr HIV
As Deputy Attorney General, Barr – together with others at the Department of Justice – successfully led the effort for the withdrawal of a proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would have allowed people with HIV/AIDS into the United States.
Barr also advocated the use of Guantanamo Bay to prevent Haitian refugees and HIV infected individuals from claiming asylum in the United States. According to Vox in December 2018, he supported an aggressive “law and order” agenda on immigration as Attorney General in the Bush Administration.
William Barr Death Penalty
William Barr supports the death penalty, arguing that it reduces crime. Barr advocated a Bush-backed bill that would have expanded the types of crime that could be punished by execution.
In a 1991 op-ed in The New York Times, Barr argued that death row inmates’ ability to challenge their sentences should be limited to avoid cases dragging on for years: “This lack of finality devastates the criminal justice system. It diminishes the deterrent effect of state criminal laws, saps state prosecutorial resources, and continually reopens the wounds of victims and survivors.”
William Barr Drugs
Barr personally prefers a federal ban on marijuana. However, due to thinking that a general consensus on a federal ban is not possible, he prefers the STATES Act on marijuana legalization. “I think it’s a mistake to back off on marijuana… However, if we want a federal approach, if we want states to have their own laws, then let’s get there and let’s get there the right way.” He also stated that DOJ policy should align with congressional legislation.
Currently, the STATES Act is being analyzed by the Department of Justice for “comment”: “Once we get those comments, we’ll be able to work with you on any concerns about the STATES law, but I would much rather that approach – the approach taken by the STATES Act – than where we currently are.”
William Barr 2016 election
Barr donated $55,000 to a political action committee that backed Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and $2,700 to Donald Trump during the general election campaign.
William Barr Executive Powers
Barr is a proponent of the unitary executive theory, which holds that the President has broad executive powers. Before joining the Trump administration, Barr argued that the president has “complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding.”
William Barr Salary
Barr has an estimated salary of $1.5 million.
William Barr Net Worth
Barr has an estimated net worth of $40 million.
William Barr Height and Weight
Barr stands tall at a height of 5 feet 9 inches and weighs 80 Kg.
William Barr Education
Barr joined the Corpus Christi School and Horace Mann School and earned his B.A. degree in government in 1971 and his M.A. degree in government and Chinese studies in 1973, both from Columbia University. He earned his Juris Doctor degree with the highest honors in the year 1977 from the George Washington University Law School.
William Barr Family
Barr was born to Donald Barr (father) and Mary Margaret (Ahern) a Columbia University faculty members as the second of four sons. His father taught English literature at Columbia University prior to becoming headmaster of the Dalton School in Manhattan and later the Hackley School in Tarrytown, both members of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Donald was born Jewish but later converted to Catholicism while William’s mother is of Irish ancestry.
William Barr Wife
Barr married Christine Moynihan Barr in 1973. Together they have three daughters. His wife holds a master’s degree in library science.
William Barr Children
William and his wife has three daughters named Mary, Patricia, and Meg. Their eldest daughter Mary before worked for the Department of Justice where she was a former federal prosecutor. While at the DOJ Mary prosecuted gang members as well as drug traffickers and in the year 2018, she became the Director of Opioid Enforcement and Prevention Efforts in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.
In the year 2019, she left and started working in the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. Their second eldest child Patricia was a member of the counsel for the House Agriculture Committee.
Meg, their youngest child, was a Washington prosecutor as well as a counsel for the Republican Senator Mike Braun. Meg’s husband Tyler McGaughey left the U.S. Attorney’s office in Virginia to join the White House Counsel’s office in the year 2019.
William Barr Testimony
On January 14, 2019, a day prior to Barr’s confirmation hearing for Attorney General, Barr sent written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the eventual final Mueller report, saying “it is very important that the public and Congress be informed of the results of the special counsel’s work. For that reason, my goal will be to provide as much transparency as I can consistent with the law.”
During May 1, 2019, testimony prior to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr stated he accepted Mueller’s interpretation of the law that was applied in the Report. However, in a May 30 CBS News interview, Barr said he had applied his own interpretation of the law and took the position that obstruction laws cannot apply to presidents who abuse their official powers to impede an investigation for a corrupt reason. Barr elaborated: “As a matter of law … we didn’t agree with the legal analysis – a lot of the legal analysis in the report. It did not reflect the views of the department”.
During a June 2020 House Judiciary Committee testimony, Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general for whom Barr served during the George H. W. Bush presidency, asserted that Barr “poses the greatest threat, in my lifetime, to our rule of law and to public trust in it”. Three months later, Ayer claimed Barr “is on a mission to install the president as an autocrat.”
William Barr Attorney General
Barr an attorney serving as the 85th United States Attorney General since the year 2019, before holding the office from 1991 to 1993. In the 1980s, He served for the law firm Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge, sandwiching a year’s work in the White House of the Ronald Reagan administration dealing with legal policies. Before becoming Attorney General in the year 1991, Barr held numerous other posts within the Department of Justice, including leading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) as well as serving as Deputy Attorney General.
As deputy attorney general, Barr authorized an FBI operation in the year 1991 which freed hostages at the Talladega federal prison. An influential advocate for tougher criminal justice policies, Barr as attorney general in the year 1992 authored the report The Case for More Incarceration, where he argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate. Under Barr’s advice, President George H. W. Bush in the year 1992 pardoned six officials involved in the Iran–Contra affair.
Barr became attorney general for the second time in the year 2019. During his ongoing term, he has received criticism from some for his handling of several challenges, including his mischaracterized summary as well as a selective redaction of the Mueller report, interventions in the guilty convictions and sentences of former advisors to President Trump, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn and allegations of political interference in the removal of Geoffrey Berman from his Southern District of New York attorney position in a matter pertaining to the indictment of Turkish bank Halkbank, a bank with close personal ties to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
William Barr Religion
Barr is a christian, hiss’s father was Jewish and raised in Judaism but later converted to Christianity and joined the Catholic Church. His mother is of Irish ancestry. Barr was raised as a Catholic.