Pardons, Presidential Power, and Worry About Bill Barr
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than 25 years after serving as Attorney General under George HW Bush, Barr is set to return to the role this week. What should we expect? And what should the senators at the confirmation hearing be asking?
Guest: Noah Feldman, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University and columnist at Bloomberg.
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Podcast production by Mary Wilson and Jayson De Leon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up next, it's coverage of today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of William Barr, President Bush's choice to be the nation's new Attorney General. |
| 0:16.4 | Maybe the weirdest thing about today's Senate hearing for Attorney General nominee William Barr is that we've been here before. William Barr is 41 years of age. He worked for the Central |
| 0:26.1 | Intelligence Agency and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals before joining with President Reagan's |
| 0:31.2 | transition team. More than 25 years ago, it was President George H.W. Bush who'd nominated |
| 0:36.5 | Barr to be Attorney General. That's the head of the Department of Justice. And it was President George H.W. Bush who'd nominated Barr to be Attorney General. |
| 0:38.2 | That's the head of the Department of Justice. And it was Senators Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurman, and |
| 0:43.1 | Joe Biden who were questioning him. Executive privilege. In your capacity at the Justice |
| 0:49.3 | Department, have you ever refused access to information sought by a congressional committee on the grounds |
| 0:55.6 | of executive privilege or recommended that? |
| 0:59.0 | Well, I was at OLC, I was at OLC. |
| 1:03.5 | Behind bar while he testified, his wife and three daughters. |
| 1:07.5 | Side note here, one of those daughters is now a lawyer herself. She's actually in charge of the DOJ's response to the opioid crisis. |
| 1:14.7 | So if this latest round of hearings goes well, her father may be about to become her boss. |
| 1:19.9 | I think there's been a little bit of hype about my position on executive privilege. |
| 1:26.7 | Are you going to be watching the hearings? |
| 1:28.7 | I will certainly watch some of them. |
| 1:32.3 | Noah Feldman studies constitutional law, teaches at Harvard. |
| 1:36.4 | Feldman's been thinking about what we can learn from William Barr's first stint at the DOJ. |
| 1:41.4 | Well, first of all, I'm just inherently fascinated when someone appears from history |
| 1:44.8 | and suddenly is going to have a new historical role. You know, if Barr is confirmed, which seems |
| 1:49.0 | likely, he'll be the only person, as far as I'm able to determine, who's ever served as |
| 1:53.0 | Attorney General two different times, and he will have done it more than 25 years apart from |
... |
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