THE IRONY OF GLENN GREENWALD CUDDLING UP WITH BILL BARR, THE GRANDFATHER OF ED SNOWDEN’S PHONE DRAGNET

[David Morris]

https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/04/04/the-irony-of-glenn-greenwald-cuddling-up-with-bill-barr-the-grand-father-of-ed-snowdens-phone-dragnet/


Glenn Greenwald, who has written two books about the abuse of Presidential
power, continues to dig in on his factually ignorant claims about the
Mueller report. For days, he and the denialists said that if Mueller’s
report was being misrepresented by Bill Barr, Mueller would speak up. Now
that Mueller’s team has done so, Glenn complains that these are anonymous
leaks and nevertheless only address obstruction, not a conspiracy with
Russia on the election.
[...]
Glenn’s denialism is all the more remarkable, though, given that this same
guy who wrote two books on abuse of presidential power is choosing to trust
a memo from Bill Barr that was obviously playing legalistic games over what
the public record says. As Glenn must know well, Barr has a history of
engaging in precisely the kind of cover-up of presidential abuses Glenn
once professed to oppose, fairly epically on Iran-Contra. The cover-up that
Barr facilitated on that earlier scandal was the model that Dick Cheney
used in getting away with leaking Valerie Plame’s identity and torture and
illegal wiretapping, the kinds of presidential abuses that Glenn once
professed to oppose.
[...]
This is, it seems, the strange plight of the denialist left, cozying up to
the kind of authoritarians that their entire career, at least to this
point, have vigorously opposed.