After Attorney General William Barr dropped charges against Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn earlier this month, nearly 2,000 former Justice Department officials signed a petition asking him to resign.
Barr’s move, which was advocated by Trump and his supporters, raised charges of politicizing the Department of Justice. Flynn admitted to having lied to interrogators when asked about Russia’s meddling with the 2016 elections,but he later withdrew his guilty plea.
In the petition, the former officials accused Barr of “repeated assaults on the rule of law,” affirming that his decision to drop the case called for bipartisan opposition.
The officials, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, stated: “if any of us, or anyone reading this statement who is not a friend of the president, were to lie to federal investigators in the course of a properly predicated counterintelligence investigation, and admit we did so under oath, we would be prosecuted for it.”
Earlier this week, several officials also demanded a third-party judge be appointed in the case to review Barr’s actions. The judge in the Flynn case granted this request last week.
“In the midst of the greatest public health crisis our nation has faced in over a century, we would all prefer it if Congress could focus on the health and prosperity of Americans,” they said. “Yet Attorney General Barr has left Congress with no choice.”
