House Democrats are seeking to ground Attorney General William Barr in Washington, D.C, by cutting off the Attorney General’s government travel outside of the capital.
Democrats revealed the measure as a set of 12 goodies they intend to provide to the party’s liberal base in budget proceedings for fiscal year 2021. The DOJ budget allocation prevents the use of any federal funding “from supporting Attorney General travel outside the National Capital Region.”
Democrats are citing Barr’s investigation of federal corruption and FBI misconduct targeting the Trump campaign, fabricating claims of a wide-ranging Russian plot in order to use federal power to monitor and spy upon the candidate. Barr has made fact-finding trips to Italy in order to get to the bottom of DOJ misconduct in the matter, which apparently arouses the ire of Democrats.
House Democrats are also seeking to compel the Attorney General to testify before the Judiciary Committee.
“While these provisions are intended to force Attorney General Barr to respond to congressional oversight, it would also limit his ability to travel abroad playing detective on Trump conspiracy theories,” said Appropriations Committee spokesman Evan Hollander to the Washington Examiner.
It’s somewhat doubtful such a nakedly partisan measure will ultimately make it through the budget process, as a de facto restriction of the Attorney General to Washington D.C. would prevent oversight over the Department of Justice, one of the most important and largest departments of the federal government.
Perhaps Democrats will be inclined to up the ante when they don’t get what they want, and they’ll pass a new provision requiring Barr sit quietly in a small closet until his tenure as Attorney General is over.