The Justice Department May Have Violated Attorney General Barr’s Own Policy Memo – By Robert Faturechi and Justin Elliott (Pro Publica) / Oct 6 2020
In a memo from May, the attorney general reminded Justice Dept. prosecutors to avoid partisan politics. Then a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania announced an election investigation that had partisan overtones.
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When the Justice Department recently publicized an ongoing investigation into potentially improperly discarded Trump ballots, critics accused it of violating long-standing agency policy against interfering in an election.
But the unusual decision to publicly detail the Pennsylvania case may also have run afoul of guidelines that Attorney General William Barr himself issued to federal prosecutors this year, according to a memo obtained by ProPublica.
In May, Barr wrote a directive to all Justice Department employees imploring them to be “particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship” when it comes to election-related crimes.
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