New York Times Prints Book Review of Bill Barr… by Jeffrey Toobin!

Conservative best-sellers rarely get mentioned in The New York Times Book Review. So it was surprising that William Barr’s memoir Unspeakable Thing after anotherThe review was done on Sunday. Another surprising fact was that the reviewer was Jeffrey Toobin.

We’ll belaboring the obvious. When you want a book reviewer who can inveigh against a “complete disregard for norms” with the highest moral seriousness you do….NOT choose Toobin. ….NOT Choose Jeffrey Toobin. His first book, “The Book Reviewer” was able to decry political partisanship. Opening Arguments was a partisan Democrat hit job as an insider in the Iran-Contra investigation headed by special counsel Lawrence Walsh. 

Toobin, who was so scandalized by Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report only a few short weeks before its release, is the most comical part of this review. That’s odd – Toobin’s inside-the-Walsh-probe book came out in February 1991, when Walsh’s final report came out in August of 1993.

When the Justice Department got around to releasing the actual report several weeks later, it became apparent that the evidence against Trump was more incriminating than Barr let on, but by that point the attorney general had succeeded in shaping the story to the president’s great advantage.

Somehow, all the power of the liberal media failed to “shape the story” to Trump’s disadvantage.

Nothing in Toobin’s book review sounds the slightest bit different than any everyday garden-variety spin on Barr and Trump than what you have heard on CNN. Toobin is not going to surprise – a la Jon Stewart – with some new, more negative interpretation on the Mueller probe and how it utterly failed to deliver what liberals wanted – an indictment and/or removal of President Trump.

Barr’s hostility to Mueller is painted as a scandal in itself:

Barr refers to the allegations that Trump colluded with the Russians in the lead-up to the election as, variously, the “Russiagate lunacy,” the “bogus Russiagate scandal,” “the biggest political injustice in our history” and the “Russiagate nonsense” (twice). Barr kept his word, and sought out to discredit Mueller and defend Trump wherever possible. Barr’s book reveals that Trump initially asked Barr for his defense team. However, Barr decided that as Attorney General he would be able to do more good on behalf of Trump. He was right.

Toobin wrote, “Barr depicts Mueller as a former colleague, friend, and service member in the George H. W. Bush administration.” It is amusing. That impression was reinforced when Mueller testified in front of Congress. He wasn’t in command. Toobin doesn’t like it when Barr makes the story against Team Collusion.

Barr’s rhetoric about culture war and sneering is the biggest spin line of CNN employees.