William Barr

Early life and education

Barr was born in New York City in 1950. His father, Donald Barr, was an educator and writer who taught English literature at Columbia University before becoming headmaster of the Dalton School in Manhattan and later the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, both members of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Barr's mother, Mary Margaret (née Ahern), also taught at Columbia. Barr's father was raised Jewish but later converted to the Roman Catholic Church. His mother is of Irish Catholic ancestry. Barr was raised as a Catholic. Barr was the second of four sons, and his younger brother Stephen Barr is a professor of physics at the University of Delaware.

Barr grew up on New York City's Upper West Side. As a child, he attended a Catholic grammar school, Corpus Christi School, and then the non-sectarian Horace Mann School. After high school, he attended Columbia University, where he majored in government and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1971. Barr was also an active member in the Sigma Nu fraternity. He did two additional years of graduate study at Columbia, receiving a Master of Arts in government and Chinese studies in 1973. While at Columbia, Barr opposed anti–Vietnam War occupation protests by students on campus.

After moving to Washington, D.C., to work as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Barr entered the evening student program at George Washington University Law School. He graduated in 1977 with a Juris Doctor with highest honors.

Early career

Barr worked for the CIA from 1971 to 1977 while attending graduate school and law school. He was first hired as a summer intern for two years. During his law school years he was an analyst in the Intelligence Directorate division from 1973 to 1975, and then transitioning to an assistant in the Office of Legislative Counsel and an agency liaison to Congress from 1975 to 1977.

After graduating from law school in 1977, Barr spent one year as a law clerk to Judge Malcolm Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He then joined the law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman) from 1978 to 1982 and again from 1983 to 1989, after serving as Deputy Assistant Director for Legal Policy on the domestic policy staff at the Reagan White House from May 1982 to September 1983.

Barr has never prosecuted a case.

U.S. Department of Justice

In 1989, at the beginning of his administration, President George H. W. Bush appointed Barr to the U.S. Department of Justice as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), an office which functions as the legal advisor for the president and executive agencies. Barr was known as a strong defender of presidential power. He wrote an advisory opinion justifying the U.S. invasion of Panama and arrest of Manuel Noriega. He wrote legal justifications for the practice of rendition, so that the FBI could enter onto foreign soil without the consent of the host government to apprehend fugitives wanted by the United States government for terrorism or drug-trafficking. Barr declined a congressional request for the full 1989 opinion, but instead provided a document that "summarizes the principal conclusions". Congress subpoenaed the opinion, and its public release after Barr's departure from the Justice Department showed he had omitted significant findings in the opinion from his summary document.

U.S. deputy attorney general (1990–1991)

In May 1990, Barr was appointed deputy attorney general, the official responsible for day-to-day management of the department. According to media reports, he was generally praised for his professional management of the department.

During August 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh resigned to campaign for the Senate, Barr was named acting attorney general. Three days after Barr accepted that position, 121 Cuban inmates, awaiting deportation to Cuba, seized nine hostages at the Talladega federal prison. He directed the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team to assault the prison, which resulted in rescuing all hostages without loss of life.

First tenure as U.S. attorney general (1991–1993)

During his first tenure as AG, media characterized Barr as "a staunch conservative who rarely hesitates to put his hardline views into action". He was described as affable with a dry, self-deprecating wit. The New York Times described the "central theme" of his tenure to be "his contention that violent crime can be reduced only by expanding Federal and state prisons to jail habitual violent offenders". In an effort to prioritize violent crime, Barr reassigned 300 FBI agents from counterintelligence work to investigations of gang violence. The New York Times called this move "the largest single manpower shift in the bureau's history".

During the 1992 election year, The Wall Street Journal wrote of Barr's work that he "has put a heavy emphasis on attention-grabbing events and pronouncements that may have more to do with presidential election-year politicking than with fighting crime on the streets."

Nomination and confirmation in 1991

It was reported that President Bush was impressed with Barr's management of the hostage crisis; weeks later, Bush nominated him as attorney general.

At the time of his 1991 nomination, Barr enjoyed a "sterling reputation" among Republican and Democratic politicians alike. His two-day confirmation hearing was "unusually placid", and he was received well by both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Asked whether he thought a constitutional right to privacy included the right to an abortion, Barr responded that he believed the Constitution was not originally intended to create a right to abortion; that Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided; and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators". Barr also said at the hearings that Roe v. Wade was "the law of the land" and claimed he did not have "fixed or settled views" on abortion. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Joe Biden, though disagreeing with Barr, responded that it was the "first candid answer" he had heard from a nominee on a question that witnesses would normally evade; Biden hailed Barr as "a throwback to the days when we actually had attorneys general that would talk to you". Barr was approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee, was confirmed by voice vote by the full Senate, and was sworn in as attorney general on November 26, 1991.

The Case for More Incarceration

In 1992, Barr authored a report, The Case for More Incarceration, which argued for an increase in the United States incarceration rate, the creation of a national program to construct more prisons, and the abolition of parole release. Barr argued that incarceration reduced crime, pointing to crime and incarceration rates in 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. A 1999 criminology study criticized Barr's analysis, saying "so complex an issue as the relationship between crime and punishment cannot be addressed through so simplistic an analysis as a negative correlation between the two very aggregated time series of crime rates and incarceration rates." University of Minnesota criminologist Michael Tonry said the data in Barr's report was deceptively presented; if Barr had chosen five-year intervals, then the data would not have supported Barr's argument, and if Barr had chosen to look at violent crime specifically (as opposed to all crimes as a category), then the data would not have supported his argument.

Barr said in the report, "The benefits of increased incarceration would be enjoyed disproportionately by black Americans." In the report, Barr approvingly quoted New Mexico attorney general Hal Stratton, "I don't know anyone [who] goes to prison on their first crime. By the time you go to prison, you are a pretty bad guy." Barr's report influenced the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which aimed to increase the incarceration rate.

Investigations

In October 1991, Barr appointed then-retired Democratic Chicago judge Nicholas Bua as special counsel in the Inslaw scandal. Bua's 1993 report found the Department of Justice guilty of no wrongdoing in the matter.

In October 1992, Barr appointed then retired New Jersey federal judge Frederick B. Lacey to investigate the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency handling of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) Iraqgate scandal. The appointment came after Democrats called for a special prosecutor during the scandal fearing a "cover-up" by the administration. House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. González called for Barr's resignation, citing "repeated, clear failures and obstruction" by the Department of Justice in allegedly delaying an investigation of the BNL-Iraqgate case. González also called for an independent special counsel investigation.

Bank of Credit and Commerce International

In July 1991, regulators in seven countries shut down the Luxembourg-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), after investigators uncovered that the decentralized and poorly regulated bank, which was allegedly run by Saudi and possibly Pakistani Intelligence, was involved in fraud and money laundering operations for criminal organizations, corrupt governments, and intelligence agencies. BCCI managed to circumvent Federal Reserve controls to buy the bank holding company First American Bankshares, allowing direct access to American financial institutions. Several sources have alleged that the CIA had been aware of BCCI's activities and its purchase of First American, but since the CIA, DIA, and the NSC utilized BCCI accounts for covert operations and since the Saudis' provided intelligence to the CIA from BCCI's illicit activities (see Safari Club), the CIA worked with Barr to prevent any investigation of BCCI, which was directed by Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller since 1986 (other sources claim 1983).

After the bank was shut down in 1991, Barr testified in congress that the investigation had "coordination" problems and promised to remedy the issue but other federal prosecutors claim Barr actively thwarted several indictments of BCCI in Florida, when the Customs Service discovered that CenTrust Bank of Miami was a front for BCCI and possibly Saudi Intelligence. The American investigation of BCCI was taken over by Senator John Kerry after discovering the bank during drug trafficking investigations. After becoming impatient with the slow pace and inaction of the Justice Department under Barr, Kerry had the investigation turned over to New York state district attorney Robert Morgenthau, who managed to extract a plea agreement with BCCI for various criminal violations and the indictment of First American chairman Clark Clifford.

Phone surveillance program

In 1992, Barr launched a surveillance program to gather records of innocent Americans' international phone calls. The purpose of the DEA program was to collect "bulk logs of outgoing international phone calls from the United States to countries deemed to be linked to narcotics trafficking" through "issuing administrative subpoenas to phone companies" According to USA Today, the program "provided a blueprint for far broader phone-data surveillance the government launched after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001". The DoJ inspector general concluded that this program had been launched without a review of its legality and made 16 recommendations including areas relating to subpoena procedures and guidance training materials.

In December 2019, Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Patrick J. Leahy asked the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Barr for approving the program, accusing Barr of "an illegal, bulk surveillance program" alleging "without conducting any legal analysis".

Iran-Contra

In late 1992, Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, who had been chosen to investigate the Iran–Contra affair, found documents in the possession of Reagan's former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, which Walsh said was "evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public". Weinberger was set to stand trial on felony charges on January 5, 1993. His "indictment said Mr. Weinberger's notes contradicted Mr. Bush's assertions that he had only a fragmentary knowledge of the arms secretly sold to Iran in 1985 and 1986 in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon." According to Walsh, then-president Bush might have been called as a witness.

On December 24, 1992, during his final month in office, Bush, on the advice of Barr, pardoned Weinberger, along with five other administration officials who had been found guilty on charges relating to the Iran–Contra affair. Barr was consulted extensively regarding the pardons, and especially advocated for pardoning Weinberger.

Walsh complained about the move, insinuating that Bush on Barr's advice had used the pardons to avoid testifying and stating that: "The Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed." In 2003, he wrote an account of the investigation in his book, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up.

Because of this and Barr's unwillingness to appoint an independent counsel to look into a second scandal known as Iraqgate, New York Times writer William Safire began to refer to Barr as "Coverup-General Barr", accusing Barr of concealing George H. W. Bush's involvement in Iraqgate and the Iran–Contra affair. Barr, however, responded that he believed Bush had made the right decision regarding that and he felt people in the case had been treated unfairly. Barr said Walsh was a "head-hunter" who "had completely lost perspective".

Post-Bush administration career

Upon leaving the DOJ in 1993, Barr was appointed by Virginia Governor George Allen to co-chair a commission to implement tougher criminal justice policies and abolish parole in the state. Barr has been described as a "leader of the parole-abolition campaign" in Virginia.

After leaving the DOJ, he criticized the Clinton administration for being "soft on crime". Barr expressed his opposition to efforts to end mandatory minimum sentencing. In a 1993 op-ed, he wrote, "The notion that there are sympathetic people out there who become hapless victims of the criminal-justice system and are locked away in federal prison beyond the time they deserve is simply a myth." In a 1995 essay, Barr rejected that crime was caused by material factors, such as poverty, arguing instead that crime was caused by immorality: "Spending more money on these material social programs is not going to have an impact on crime, and, if anything, it will exacerbate the problem."

In 1994, Barr became Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the telecommunications company GTE Corporation, where he served for 14 years. During his corporate tenure, Barr directed a successful litigation campaign by the local telephone industry to achieve deregulation by scuttling a series of FCC rules, personally arguing several cases in the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court. In 2000, when GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to become Verizon Communications, Barr became the general counsel and executive vice president of Verizon until he retired in 2008. Barr became a multimillionaire from working in GTE and Verizon. In 2001, Barr's salary was reportedly $1.5 million.

From 1997 to 2000, Barr served on the Board of Visitors of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg.

In 2009, Barr was briefly of counsel to the firm Kirkland & Ellis. From 2010 until 2017, he advised corporations on government enforcement matters and regulatory litigation; he rejoined Kirkland and Ellis in 2017.

From 2009 to 2018, Barr served on the board of directors for Time Warner.

Comments about the Starr investigation of President Clinton

In March 1998, Barr lambasted the Clinton administration for criticizing Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation of the Whitewater controversy, which had shifted towards an investigation of an alleged affair between Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Barr said the criticism appeared "to have the improper purpose of influencing and impeding an ongoing criminal investigation and intimidating possible jurors, witnesses and even investigators".

Comments about the Trump administration

During the first two years of the Trump presidency, Barr frequently criticized legal challenges against Trump and investigations into the Trump 2016 campaign and presidency.

In 2017, Barr said there was "nothing inherently wrong" with Donald Trump's calls for investigating Hillary Clinton while the two were both running for president. Barr added that an investigation into an alleged Uranium One controversy was more warranted than looking into whether Trump conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 elections. Barr also said in 2017 that he did not think "all this stuff" about incarcerating or prosecuting Hillary Clinton was appropriate to say, but added that "there are things that should be investigated that haven't been investigated," although the FBI began investigating the Clinton Foundation and the related Uranium One matter in 2015, followed by investigations by Republican congressional committees.

In February 2017, Barr argued that Trump was justified in firing Acting Attorney General Sally Yates over her refusal to defend Executive Order 13769.

Barr was publicly critical of the special counsel investigation. In 2017, he faulted Mueller for hiring prosecutors who have contributed to Democratic politicians, saying that his team should have had more "balance", and characterized the obstruction of justice investigation as "asinine" and that it was "taking on the look of an entirely political operation to overthrow the president".

In June 2018, Barr sent an unsolicited 20-page memo to senior Justice Department officials. He also provided copies to members of Trump's legal team and discussed it with some of them. In his memo, Barr argued that the Special Counsel should not be investigating Trump for obstruction of justice because Trump's actions, such as firing FBI Director James Comey, were within his powers as head of the executive branch. He characterized the obstruction investigation as "fatally misconceived" and "grossly irresponsible" and "potentially disastrous" to the executive branch. The day after the existence of the memo became known, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said "our decisions are informed by our knowledge of the actual facts of the case, which Mr. Barr didn't have." Democrats later characterized the memo as Barr's "job application" for the attorney general position.

Political donations

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) financially assists Republicans in their Senate election contests; in the seven years from 2009 to 2016, Barr gave six donations to the NRSC totaling $85,400. In a five-month period from October 2018 to February 2019, Barr donated five times (around $10,000 every month) for a total of $51,000. When Barr started donating more frequently to the NRSC, it was uncertain whether then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions would remain in his job. Barr continued donating even after Sessions resigned, and after Trump nominated Barr for attorney general. The donations stopped after Barr was confirmed by the Senate as attorney general. NRSC refunded Barr $30,000 before his confirmation. Previously in 2017, Barr had said he felt "prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party."

Second tenure as U.S. attorney general (2019–2020)

Second nomination and confirmation

On December 7, 2018, President Donald Trump announced Barr's nomination to succeed Jeff Sessions. Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman reported that Trump had sought Barr as chief defense lawyer for Trump regarding the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller after Barr made three positions known. First, Barr supported Trump's firing of Comey on May 9, 2017. Second, he questioned the appointments of some of Mueller's prosecutors due to political donations they had made to the Clinton campaign. Third, he alleged there were conflicts of interest of two appointees to the Special Counsel Team, Jennie Rhee and Bruce Ohr.

Barr was confirmed as attorney general on February 14, 2019, by a 54–45 near party-line vote, with Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) as the three Democrats to vote Yea. Republican senator Rand Paul (R-KY) voted No and Richard Burr (R-NC) did not vote. Later that day, Barr was sworn in as the nation's 85th attorney general by Chief Justice John Roberts in a ceremony at the White House. He is the first person to be appointed to a second non-consecutive term as attorney general since John J. Crittenden in 1850.

Tenure

In May 2019, three months into his tenure as attorney general, the Associated Press characterized Barr as a champion and advocate for Trump. Barr had enthusiastically supported Trump's political agenda, repeated Trump's assertion that those investigating Trump had engaged in spying, defied congressional subpoenas, and refused to give Congress an unredacted version of the Mueller report.

Under Barr's leadership, the Justice Department changed its position on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Previously the department took the position that the individual mandate provision was unconstitutional, but could be severed from the whole healthcare law. On March 25, the department updated its position to argue that the entire law was unconstitutional. On May 2, the department conducted a filing with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to nullify the entire law, arguing that the removal of the provision on individual mandate results in the entire law becoming unconstitutional.

Also in July 2019, Barr reportedly made the decision to not bring federal civil rights charges against New York policeman Daniel Pantaleo for causing the death of Eric Garner. In so doing, he overruled the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which advocated charging Pantaleo, instead agreeing with Justice Department prosecutors from New York.

On July 25, 2019, Barr ordered the resumption of federal executions.

On July 8, 2019, Barr announced his recusal from the Justice Department's review of the 2008 federal prosecution of American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). Barr later announced that Justice Department officials were investigating "serious irregularities" at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

In mid-August 2019, Barr had a rare face-to-face meeting with Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, who since earlier that year represented former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Dmytry Firtash as attorneys. Trump had announced in March 2018 that diGenova and Toensing would join his legal defense team during the Mueller investigation; the appointments were withdrawn days later, though Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow said they might assist in other legal matters. DiGenova has said he has known Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. Since 2014, Firtash had been fighting extradition to the United States under a federal indictment while he was living in Austria after being arrested there and released on $155 million bail, and diGenova and Toensing sought to have Barr drop the charges. Firtash was a middleman for importing Russian natural gas into Ukraine and has said he was installed in that role by Russian organized crime boss Semion Mogilevich; Russian president Vladimir Putin reportedly agreed to the appointment. When he was vice president, Joe Biden had urged Ukraine to eliminate middlemen such as Firtash and to reduce the country's reliance on imports of Russian natural gas. Giuliani had directed associate Lev Parnas to approach Firtash with a recommendation to hire diGenova and Toensing, with the proposition that Firtash could help provide damaging information on Biden, which Parnas's attorney described was "part of any potential resolution to [Firtash's] extradition matter." DiGenova and Toensing obtained a September 2019 statement from Shokin that made false assertions about corruption by Biden. The statement noted that it was prepared "at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash ('DF'), for use in legal proceedings in Austria." Giuliani promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by Biden. Prior to meeting with diGenova and Toensing, Barr had been briefed in detail on the initial Trump–Ukraine scandal whistleblower complaint within the CIA that had been forwarded to the Justice Department, as well as on Giuliani's activities in Ukraine. Barr declined to intervene in the Firtash case. Bloomberg News reported that its sources told them Giuliani's high-profile publicity of the Shokin statement had greatly reduced the chances of the Justice Department dropping the charges against Firtash, as it would appear to be a political quid pro quo.

Post-DOJ career

In 2022, it was reported that Barr would launch a law and consulting firm with former Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot. This later became Torridon Law, which represented a variety of clients including George Mason University in response to the U.S. Department of Education's investigations around alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for discriminating "on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) by failing to respond effectively to a pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty".

Comments on failed Sussmann prosecution

On June 1, 2022, Barr was interviewed on Fox News about the verdict in the failed prosecution of Michael Sussman. He continued to defend Trump by repeating debunked "Russiagate" conspiracy theories about the origins of the Russia investigation by stating that the case against Sussmann "crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching, as a dirty trick, the whole Russiagate collusion narrative." The Washington Post noted that the Justice Department traditionally seeks to avoid impugning individuals who are not charged with crimes, and the DOJ is not involved in exposing political "dirty tricks" that have not been found unlawful. Barr also asserted Durham "exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI, the senior ranks of the FBI, who knowingly use this information to start an investigation of Trump," though the Sussmann case did not relate to how the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation began. Although Barr appointed Durham to investigate possible FBI wrongdoing in opening Crossfire Hurricane, Durham's prosecution of Sussmann portrayed the FBI as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of wrongdoing.

January 6 committee testimony

Barr testified to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack behind closed doors on June 2, 2022. Portions of his videotaped testimony were presented during the committee's public hearings days later. Barr testified that before resigning as attorney general, he had told President Trump that allegations of election fraud were "bullshit". At times during his testimony he could not control his laughter at the absurdity of some fraud allegations, such as the Italygate theory that satellites controlled from Italy had flipped votes from Trump to Biden, and that former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had orchestrated an election fraud scheme, despite having died seven years earlier. Barr testified Trump never gave "an indication of interest in what the actual facts were," adding the president had "become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff."

Investigation into Trump's handling of presidential documents

Barr has supported the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and its investigation into the handling of presidential documents by Trump after his presidency, and dismissed Trump's calls for a special master to be appointed.

Criticism

On December 11, 2019, former attorney general Eric Holder, who had served under President Obama, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post claiming William Barr is "unfit to be attorney general" for his "naked partisan[ship]", "attempts to vilify the president's critics", his attacks on the inspector general and his comments on ongoing investigations.

In a December 2019 opinion piece, former FBI director, CIA director and federal judge William Webster wrote of "a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love". Webster asserted that "the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order are, tragically, under assault," writing that "aspersions cast upon [FBI employees] by the president and my longtime friend, Attorney General William P. Barr, are troubling in the extreme." Since 2005, Webster had served as the chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Sixty-five law professors and faculty from George Washington University Law School, Barr's alma mater, wrote in a June 2020 letter that he had "failed to fulfill his oath of office to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States'". They wrote that Barr's actions as attorney general "have undermined the rule of law, breached constitutional norms, and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his office and of the Department of Justice".

During a June 2020 House Judiciary Committee testimony, Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general for whom Barr worked during the George H. W. Bush presidency, asserted that Barr "poses the greatest threat, in my lifetime, to our rule of law and to public trust in it". Three months later, Ayer claimed Barr "is on a mission to install the president as an autocrat".

In January 2022, it was reported that the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack held conversations with Barr about the Trump administration's approach to compromise the integrity of the 2020 election, specifically about the potential coordination between the Justice Department and the Defense Department.

Political positions

A lifelong Republican, Barr takes an expansive view of executive powers and supports "law and order" policies. Considered an establishment Republican at the time of his confirmation, Barr gained a reputation as someone loyal to Trump and his policies during his second tenure as attorney general. His efforts to support the sitting president politically during his DOJ office tenure have been viewed as the most strenuous since those of another law-and-order attorney general, John N. Mitchell.

Immigration

As deputy attorney general, Barr – together with others at the Department of Justice – successfully led the effort for the withdrawal of a proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would have allowed people with HIV/AIDS into the United States. He also advocated the use of Guantanamo Bay to prevent Haitian refugees and HIV infected individuals from claiming asylum in the United States. According to Vox in December 2018, Barr supported an aggressive "law and order" agenda on immigration as attorney general in the Bush Administration.

Death penalty

Barr supports the death penalty, arguing that it reduces crime. He advocated a Bush-backed bill that would have expanded the types of crime that could be punished by execution. In a 1991 op-ed in The New York Times, Barr argued that death row inmates' ability to challenge their sentences should be limited to avoid cases dragging on for years: "This lack of finality devastates the criminal justice system. It diminishes the deterrent effect of state criminal laws, saps state prosecutorial resources and continually reopens the wounds of victims and survivors."

On July 25, 2019, Barr announced that the United States federal government would resume its use of capital punishment under his leadership, after nearly two decades without an execution. Barr ordered the Department of Justice to adopt a new lethal injection protocol, consisting of a single drug (pentobarbital), and ordered execution dates to be set for five inmates in December 2019 and January 2020. On July 14, 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee became the first death row inmate executed by the federal government since 2003. Twelve more individuals were executed by the Trump administration. No administration in 120 years had overseen as many executions. Barr has been attributed as playing a key role in the administration's use of execution in prisons.

Social issues

In 1991, Barr said he believed the framers of the Constitution did not originally intend to create a right to abortion, that Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided, and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators". However, Barr said during his 1991 confirmation hearings that Roe was "the law of the land" and that he did not have "fixed or settled views" on the subject.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Barr suggested that a special counsel may be necessary to investigate the leak of the ruling and that the leaker may face criminal charges.

Barr supports a federal ban on marijuana. However, he has stated that the discrepancy between federal and state law is suboptimal, and that if a uniform federal ban on marijuana could not be achieved, then he would support the STATES Act on marijuana legalization. "I think it's a mistake to back off on marijuana ... However, if we want a federal approach, if we want states to have their own laws, then let's get there and let's get there the right way." Barr also said DOJ policy should align with congressional legislation.

2016 election

Barr donated $55,000 to a political action committee that backed Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and $2,700 to Donald Trump during the general election campaign.

Executive powers

Barr is a proponent of the unitary executive theory, which holds that the president has broad executive powers. Prior to joining the Trump administration, he argued that the president has "complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding".

Race relations

In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests against racism and police brutality, Barr said he rejected the view "that the law enforcement system is systemically racist". In a CNN news interview in September 2020, Barr denied that systemic racism plays a role in police shootings of unarmed African American men and called such shootings by white police officers "very rare". Derek Chauvin, the officer who murdered Floyd, was willing to agree to third-degree murder and serve more than ten years in prison. Barr rejected a plea deal.

In September 2020, Barr suggested bringing sedition charges against disruptive looters and rioters, a legal tool that is rarely used by the United States government. Sedition charges are normally reserved for those who "conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States", according to (18 U.S.C. § 2384). Such suggestions have brought fears that Barr is politicizing the U.S. Justice Department and, if enacted, would mean that the Justice Department could prosecute individuals based on political speech.

China

In July 2020, Barr condemned large American tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple, and Hollywood studios, accusing them of "kowtowing" to the Chinese Communist Party for the sake of profits. He said that "Hollywood now regularly censors its own movies to appease the Chinese Communist Party, the world's most powerful violator of human rights."

Venezuela

In March 2020, Barr described Venezuela under the Nicolás Maduro regime as a country plagued by criminality and corruption, and announced criminal charges against him, other Venezuelan officials, and some former Colombian FARC members for what he called "narco-terrorism". He accused Maduro and high-ranking Venezuelan officials of conspiring with the FARC to ship tons of cocaine into the US to wage a health war on American citizens. According to Barr, Venezuelan leaders and the FARC faction organised an "air bridge" from a Venezuelan air base transporting cocaine to Central America and a sea route to the Caribbean. Hours after the announcement, the Department of State offered $15 million for any information leading to the arrest of Maduro.

Personal life

Family

Barr has been married to Christine Moynihan Barr since 1973. She holds a master's degree in library science, and together they have three daughters: Mary Barr Daly, Patricia Barr Straughn, and Margaret (Meg) Barr. Their eldest daughter, Mary, born 1977 or 1978, was a senior Justice Department official who oversaw the department's anti-opioid and addiction efforts; Patricia, born 1981 or 1982, was counsel for the House Agriculture Committee; and Meg, born 1984 or 1985, is a former Washington prosecutor and cancer survivor (of recurrent Hodgkin's lymphoma), was counsel for Republican Senator Mike Braun of Indiana.

In February 2019, as their father awaited Senate confirmation for his appointment as attorney general, Mary left her post at the Department of Justice as the Trump Administration's point woman on the opioid crisis and took a position at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury Department's financial crimes unit. Her husband, however, continued to work in the Justice Department's National Security Division. Around the same time Mary left the Department of Justice, Tyler McGaughey, the husband of her youngest sister, left the U.S. Attorney's office in Alexandria, Virginia, to join the White House Counsel's office.

Religion

Barr is a Roman Catholic and is a member of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. Barr served from 2014 to 2017 on the board of the Catholic Information Center (CIC) of the Archdiocese of Washington, an Opus Dei center and nexus of politically connected Catholics on K Street. Opus Dei has denied that Barr is a member. However, his views in favor of the death penalty were criticised by the Jesuit magazine America.

Barr is an enthusiastic bagpiper. He began playing at age eight and has performed competitively in Scotland with a major American pipe band. At one time, Barr was a member of the City of Washington Pipe Band. During a US Attorneys' National Conference on June 26, 2019, Barr surprised attendees by standing up in the middle of an NYPD Emerald Society performance, and joined them in playing Scotland the Brave with a bagpipe.

Barr and Robert Mueller knew each other since the 1980s and were said to be good friends, until Mueller's death in 2026. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.

Honors

In 1992, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by George Washington University.